highway virus

In these opening days when atmosphere blooms
with returning light, pollen, potency, possiblity
all the lands I've ever walked on whisper to me
each with its unique, compelling voice
I hear them walking, driving, working
paused between one errand and another
or between dreamsleep and waking
and the music that I play always becomes
a party to the psychic conspiracy
cracking open those dimensional portals
with its precious prescient sonic intervention:
There Is Life Out There...

In the poised midrange of Now, I Be
moving back into the living free space
climbing onto the green verge where
waking drive and dreamtime meet and again entangle
every altered state both on and off the map
still holds its open frequency
- and the power to tune me in again at will -
they entice invite and sometimes yank me in unwilling
reaching touching mind, skin, memory and sense
California exhales on me, sunbright
citrus CO2 humid hopeful morningbreath
Oregon is evergreengold mystery, quicksilver rivercurrent
and the shadows of invisible dreaming volcanoes
Idaho is lonelyhearted sandhills,
and those defensive mountains everdistant
Nevada is bold stormfront breaking open
lightning with nothing left to lose
the most alive of desert skies that I was ever
blessed to risk my life beneath
Arizona abandons all yearning hope on the rocks
only to enfold again with benevolent sunny sleeping forests
and O New Mexico
how I have traced your dusty roads like palmistry
backroads frontroads cracked highways blue and red
veils of halfwaking history layered on each other
how I have pulled your stardeep skyblanket over me
to sleep in a hundred unauthorized roadside beds
how lamented your dry humors, your withholding,
moved on seeking rain and sustenance,
returned again to find roots stretching
in earth that seemed too austere for nurture
yet proves to hold my answers and my growth
and every calendar ignites another cycle
does no one else contend with these energies
vibrant and virulent and virile
infectious and inevitable and immanent
surely others are similarly ambushed by
the springing of the year?