3: Tuesday

Woke up in St. Louis
and took the Days Inn yellow brick road
to a nice old lady and biscuits and gravy,
we walked under the gargoyle fox, sat and tasted
ice cold beer from the tap completely free, after
the Budweiser factory I raised my arms with Brett Hull,
and on the Mississippi shore dwarfed by the arch
I tossed our message to the ancient currents of America,
we left Missouri in the gray rain and rolled over
Illinois amber fields and
Indiana amber fields and
Joe hoping for tornadoes, Dave
driving 24 hours, we almost ran out of gas somewhere
along Route 45 at eerie Mill Shoals population
250 dreaming nothing but nighttime grain silos
and no gas stations only vacant white walls bluish in the
dusk, until finally we crossed back over the Ohio River
into Louisville, Kentucky but we wanted to sleep outside
so we found Jefferson National Forest, 20 miles
south of the city on 891, Top Hill Road was winding horrifying
darkness, with slim lanes that barely left room for a car
coming the opposite way, and one turn looking like a road
but really it was a drop far far away, and we crawled up
the hill in that total darkness, where at the top a dog found
our car, and Joe said remember what Bukowski said
about the ghost dog because he was a ghost dog,
the ghost of old Kentucky wilderness,
in the end we decided to camp another night
and took keys from an old Indiana guy that lived
in the hotel office & Joe sneaking in unnoticed;