Stan Gibilisco

A million people died in Megalopolis A. You escaped. You lived in Megalopolis B.

World cults yearn for mutual annihilation to please their gods. You reject them all.

You sell everything that won't fit in your car, pack everything that will, and take off.

Once underway, you grow lighter and fly higher.

You will never see a city again.

If you come from the east, you drive past farm fields, skirt towns, and meander through valleys.

If you come from the south, you travel over rolling country that grows colder as wind shoves your car sideways and sleet bleeds from the nimbostratus.

If you come from the west, you negotiate sage hills, sand dunes, salt flats, and mountains where the road twists up and angles down.

Migrate you must, to rigorous land and transfinite sky, to an axiomatic Cosmos.

You reach a crossroads and stop for gas.

You fill up, pay the attendant, saunter around, jump up and down, windmill your arms, pull yourself back into the car, insert the key in the ignition, turn it, and watch it break off.

You clamber out, amble into the station, and hold the key stub up for the attendant to see.

He points through a frosty window and says, Motel is over there. Leave 'er overnight. Pick 'er up in the mornin'.

You find a newspaper in a trash can. You see ads for trucks, implements, and double-wides.

You cross the street and eat the best hamburger you ever had.

The sun descends into ripsaw peaks. The sky marries the earth. Shadows vanish.

You have found car repair heaven, hamburger heaven, sunset heaven, and hell for everything you want out of your life.

You make appointments with realtors.

You look at shacks on land without lawns.

You see houses, cabins, and trailers.

You see frozen puddles where water can't collect, rattling reeds where plants can't grow, and a windburned tree that scratches the sky.

You see a clapboard hovel and a barbwire fence.

Here, you say. I will build my home here.

The nadir of winter rules West Dakota.

The earth dreams, comatose beneath a veil of white powder finer than chalk dust and colder than the ice caps of Mars.

You lie down and make a snow angel.

-- From "Sky Mountain Calling," 2006