TRAVEL WITH MOM

In summer we set out for Colorado
wheat stubble burns
Russian thistle banks
the road
hot tires smell after
a bit of rain
a windmill squeeks in the wind,

a Vesper sparrow strokes its wings
then sinks behind a rise,

few telephone poles
thirty miles without a fence
then fierce Highway 10
a sea drift across a peculiar plain
each swell for eighty miles
topped by a cattle guard,

"Look Mom, the mountains,"
she takes my hand

we drive into Colorado a kleenex
swirling in the cab.