Poem: Route 66

There is peace on these American roads
Stretches of no man’s land 
Where there used to be family farms
Before the banks foreclosed
And the family moved to California
To join the Joads in chasing the dream

Out in the American pastoral
Where dreams about dreams
Dreamt by someone else
Haunt through the world askew
Calling into contrast what we’ve become
From what we thought we’d be

Between mile markers and American towns
Lives the truth about life 
Far away from the margins
Of the mixing bowl of society
Where it’s just one person traveling
Empty roads still bound by lines

The American individual independence
Is remembered where the country is found
In early states of near empty highway
Where is sun casts long shadows
The moon illuminates the path
And the wanderer still seeks in those places

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Copyright © 2021 TJS Sherman All rights reserved.

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