Maps and Wings by Gary Mex Glazner
This is another poem I read at the Palace of the Governors.
Maps and Wings
By Gary Mex Glazner
The road looks the same
no matter where you are going.
Some roads take on a magic
from the hum of the wheels
they hold.
Route 66 was my father’s road
and his father’s road.
Model A with the dust bowl
in the rear view mirror
and California in the headlights.
From being men
to being Oakies.
The vulgarities of newcomers.
A drowsy distant hope.
Plowing and sowing the
stretch of pavement.
A gateway to work and food.
Following the hungry signs.
Route 66 was their plowshare.
They dug into the rank soil.
Held the miles in rusted fingers.
Cracked open its hull using the seeds
for guidance. Maps folded like wings.
A banquet of motion. Summoning us
now with its broken fragments.
Let us piece the road together.
This is the way they went
and we shall follow them
as we are able.
