Mid-Winter Road Trip

By Frank Kearns

Although the overnight weather report
showed that the coming cold front would stay
up in Colorado for another day

the thin film of snow that drifted
across the streets of Amarillo
told us that Flagstaff was out of the question

So we headed down toward Roswell
hoping for Las Cruces
then onto state route seventy

watching the rain freeze on the road
slowing a little more after every roadside wreck
but still going on

till out on a wide expanse of plain
at a place where a pickup truck was overturned
next to a smashed up Honda

someone else
the highway patrol
had to tell us it was time to stop

had to tell us that some days
there just is no way
to keep on heading west