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We could have made it easily to Zanzibar,
or to Greenland,
or to the South Sea Islands that lured
Columbus here. We could
have gone to Sarajevo, or to Shanghai,
or to Port Elizabeth where Steve
Biko was beaten in that room. We
might have toured Chile and visited Salvador
Allende had he not been
buried in the rubble of
Santiago, or
safaried
to the Serengeti and seen the lions
and the elephants I love, but
instead we
stayed on Rt. 128 for six years,
riding together, 10,000 miles each year,
or twice around the Earth, searching for
exits we knew well, called “20” or
Trapelo Road, chatting away, the
world passing under our feet, as the
planet rotated from light
to dark, from Autumn to Spring, from
one millennium to another, from junior high
to high, from Brooks to
L-S, from Lincoln
to Sudbury, from adolescence to some-
where else down the road, from this crisis
to that traffic jam, and sometimes
when you had fallen asleep
I would look at you,
much as my father,
returning in Bronx
darkness,
would look in
on me. Oh, this road
will keep unrolling, but I will
still turn to
see you sleeping
there, as
you travel on.
On anticipating the end of Jamie
and me commuting together
across one state,
six towns,
six years,
two decades,
two centuries,
two millennia,
1080 days,
1260 hours,
60,000 miles.
September 2001