2: Monday

On Nevermore Rd with a
blueberry muffin in my empty
Ohio stomach, I lost my hat tumbling
to the gods of the road, I watched it blow
back to Dayton in middle America blue skies
that I saw all day through Indiana & Illinois
where there was nothing but those
amber waves of grain, golden fields of corn,
cattle grazing and an occasional silo breaking
the tumbling plains and the towns had names like
Terre Haute, Brazil, Effingham, when a lady in wool
skull cap said, "long way from home ant'cha?" because
I was, little towns along Route 40 called the National
Road, and it was the first cross country highway in
America, I think, and I was also thinking that
 there'd be nothing but the St. Louis arch
was something like vertigo and I couldn't believe
as my stomach turned that Dave was abducted by aliens
and I finally dipped my hands in the Mississippi and the baptism
I'd dreamt of for so long, long was silent
at night under the moon and only the sound
of the waves and Joe and Dave in my ears alone, we
had it all to ourselves.