Chorography

// Sarah Clayville

Our road trips are prayers in disguise,
the maps paper-thin bibles forgetting
to instruct us how to live or which star
to pray towards. Bless us.

Instead we wrap our tattered fingers around
the steady wheel of a Chevy and grind our tires
into forgotten dust roads, uttering amen each time
we discover a broken waitress at a dying diner.

Or a wraparound porch caging a cowboy who sits alone,
lassoing anyone who will listen to his ancient stories
about the time his town was on the news or when
he watched his hardware store die in his arms like a runt calf.

We’ve sacrificed our GPS and placed our fates, our faith,
in the hands of sun-saturated road signs that urge us on.
Our souls have been drawn out along the highways, weary,
and all we’ve got left to pray to is the open road and the belief that

Eventually there is a place for us.