I avoid travel in cities
blaming the ages
of our children
throw out the obvious too
and busy and big insisting
it couldn’t be a holiday
if it had to be work.
I avoid interstates
though they’d save us time
and gallons of gas
because I cannot bear counting the lanes
ten in a row a solid grass median strip
dividing east and west.
Not even playing the license plate game
and winning with 38 spotted states
would make me think it was worth it.
You want to return to Australia
with Levi jeans and Nike runners
but I bypass shopping malls
their three-level glory.
I claim imported prices
aren’t much higher
when you work out the exchange
and consider how much you earn
and truly, we wouldn’t have room
in our suitcases.
There is a Navajo who sells his art
from a cork box the size of our shed
and if we bought his wooden
and coiled and beaded pipe
we’d feed his family for a day.
That should go in our suitcase.
And have you ever seen chipped
white weatherboard churches
on the side of a two-lane highway?
Where dandelions multiply
tall and yellow and wild?
The sound of gospel bleeds
through open windows.
And did you know you can drink water
fresh from a mountain stream
if you catch it in the cup of your hands
just where it cascades off a rock
as if it were a waterfall?
Come.
There is so much to see.