Arms for oars

And where was God is what he is asking himself while he drives out West to be saved by his friends waiting at shore. They preach the religion of nautical residences, saying the Pacific has saved us, not knowing what he needs is a direction of his own. He has no reason not to be there and no reason to be anywhere else. But his @#$damn tires are @#$damn tired, the spare ain't there, he's on the wrong highway, and his map is full of crop circles from damp coffee mugs. As he leaves there are thoughts of his mother in Maine with her rosary palms, his sister in Baltimore with her neatly crossed arms, his brother in Boston with his stained glass knees, his dad buried under the Church of Saint Joseph's garden in New Jersey. He just wants out of the East. He turns up the car stereo. There's a song playing in the speakers and it sounds like this.

When he can't stand driving any longer he finds a motel to keep him in sleep. He dreams of streetlights telling ghost stories, ghosts telling secrets. He wakes up at dawn and starts out again. The pine trees and low sun remind him of this girl with curly cue curls, who kissed him square and steep on the bridge over Clover Creek, with her hands in her pockets before he took them out to hold, her eyes closed and ears cold, Fall just falling all over her shoulders. He's been out of love since she left, packed up and took his heart out of state. He might as well half admit he's looking for her, wherever out there she might be. He grips the steering wheel and tries to think of anyone else, anything else. There's a song playing in his head and it sounds like this.

He's off the highway following backroads, his map folded up and thrown from the window into a stretch of farms. Cattle eyes glare, like he doesn't belong, just aimless, as he is, sure and he's already yawning but determined to keep driving, over and down the backs of hills. A cadence starts swelling, rolling, pulling old thoughts out and leaving him empty. A sweet summer smell, grass and hay, sugary soil, comes to him as though through the open door of an oven. Wind shakes his cheeks and dries his mouth, which is open with something to sing but he doesn't know what. There's a song playing in your head and it sounds like this.

Looking around he remembers what his grandpa had told him about how he would be at home in the country, growing gardens and living off the land. Meanwhile his aunt had said he'd be better suited in the city, where his creative energy would flourish, and his social skills would soar, and his uncle said no, he should find the inbetween, the green of trees and the culture of marquees. Maybe some neon lights with sunflowers blooming. He's seen all of that and he's always stayed in the same place. East. He pulls over and opens the car door. Just a step of fiction short of storybook, he shouts into the cloudless sky. He removes his faith like a pair of sandals and leaves it at the side of the road. He shrugs with the motion of a wave traveling from one side of an ocean to the other. Five miles later he ends up where he's supposed to be.