Typewriter ribbons
stretched taut across
an expanse of dreaming.
The voyage, bottomless
wells of ink, clinking.
An age of messages seeps
into these many miles.
——
“Stay on the big black line!”
a friend once quipped,
referring to hot asphalt
and awful Georgia summers,
now more intense.
Added to the asphalt.
Added to the ribbon.
——
What stories were left behind
by wayfarers’ tires?
The Wayfarer whispers
to a broken down car,
wishing well.
No one is there.
This land is dangerous.
You can disappear.
——
Young brown bear is curious
and always hungry. Disappeared.
Artic fox stares. Disappeared.
Pheasant mother crushed by a car.
Two chicks stand by her body
on the road, confused, worried.
I wanted to stop, despairing. But
the chicks would flee. If I followed,
the bear would follow me.
I would disappear. Ten years later,
I still think about those sad little things.
——
But, upon the ribbon, I left my message.
Who knows how many thousands,
maybe millions, wandered through?
Messages left, each an epitaph
for crushed pheasants.
But, I now recognize myself
as a convenient medium,
a discarded page,
over-typed gibberish,
profundity and nonsense,
tightly-tied, alloyed,
wrongly-together.
——
The wild marked me…
To the passerby, typed:
“The expanse is forever.”
©️ CG Tenpenny, 2025.
In 2016, I drove to Alaska from Georgia. The winding trip up was 8,000 miles over 41 days. The passage through Yukon Territory left its mark on my soul. I’ve never felt more insignificant than I felt in that remote place.
Inspired by tara caribou’s poem, The Endless Road.