grassroots.

i haven't seen enough
to know for sure,
but there's still promise
in amber grains
crushed under traveling foot
beyond truck stops where
two days ago, egg salad for
lunch, quick shower,
apple pie split three ways,
a coke, our first in days--
owning nothing but
a few changes of pants,
some socks, a rucksack
suspended
by rosy shoulders
and hard as peach pit feet.

i've heard once
that everything to see
is in europe.
she tells me this with her eyes closed,
perhaps channeling an image
seen too often in wanders'
scrapbooks,
her six months yields imagined
decades of residency in the old world
cobblestoned roads tripped
over by one foot too many
and i'll never really know
unless i get there myself.

but i,
i want to dip my toes into
the shenandoah,
sleep under a sagging
lovers' carved tree,
consumer excluded
reject all american
whistlin' fuckin' dixie.