Verses written between mile markers

I keep a small leather notebook in the glovebox. It is mostly full of grocery lists and gas mileage, but every once in a while a line shows up that wants to be a poem, and I write it down before the light changes.

Three from this spring, in the order they arrived.

I. The road keeps asking, and I keep answering yes, in a voice the wind takes before I am done speaking.

II. A hawk over Sedona, four slow circles, then gone. I tried to take that home and the truck was too small for it. III. Gas station coffee, the color of canyon shadow. I drink it standing up, and the day begins, and the day begins.

None of them are finished. None of them need to be. They sit in the notebook with the receipts and the maps and the dust, and that feels like the right place for them.