These empty roads

wind through what seems

like barrenness but is really

possibility, and I speed,

faster, farther, alone for miles.

Thoughts I usually censor,

dreams I rarely allow,

echo across red canyons,

swirl around sagebrush,

waiting to be acknowledged.

 

The mountains, stacked

and layered, silhouetted

against acres of sky,

loom like my future,

anchor like my past,

pointing to all I will

and will not become,

shadows of all I have

and have not been.

Accelerating, I drive farther,

faster into this sparse,

wild state, aching

for the clarity found only

on long, lonely highways.