Summer Vacation Road Trips Poem by Jenny Kalahar

Things seen through the family windshield
kept us going, kept us kids amused on long excursions
to the Mississippi for camping where the mosquitoes grew fat on our blood
to the Ozarks for Silver Dollar City and old-timey music
to Elephant Rocks for boulder climbing and stream sliding without an inner tube
or to a grandmother's house in the dull far piney north.

A fat maple tree branch
leafless, ready to drop from its jagged crack near the trunk

A dog-shaped cloud hanging puffwhite above
a stray hound turning twice, settling for a nap on a porch that wasn't his

Pop bottles too broken to turn in for deposit
dimes wasted, paining us to our hearts

A rusted tricycle missing a pedal
sitting too close to the roadside to be safely retrieved by its child

A beaten-down, slanting garage covered in license plates
Michigan's past nailed up in tangles of rectangles
Shingles of mingled decades there

A round, faded-red barn, door permanently held open by snarled weeds
with leftover rust-colored chickens looking for their past

A torn-up mattress tented against a Do Not Pass sign
shading a spray of Queen Anne's lace and bachelor's buttons

And within the station wagon
we sat saying our prayers of
Are we there yet?
I'm thirsty!
Where's the next rest stop?
I need more leg room—move!
Dad, don't hit that squirrel!
And merrily merrily merrily merrily
over miles of togetherness—
whether we liked it or not—
the tires of our childhood went rolling on