The Great American Road Show

No one poet travels the entirety of the road that is American poetry. We stop for gas or pie or a flat tire or because we can’t keep our eyes open any longer. We pause to fork up the crumbs from our plate, or we’re distracted in the midst of looking for all the pieces of the jack. While we sleep on some hard motel bed, other travelers pass us in the night.

This is a community unto itself, but the members survive in a larger culture. We get off the road for a while or forever. A poem begins and that poem ends. What goes on forever is the road. What never ends – can’t end as long as one voice speaks out its vision – is poetry.