Cross this country in a car
Enough, and as the years unwind
You’ll find each highway hides a scar
Denoting someone left behind
In roadside rests or picnic places,
Information plazas where
You’d checked the manifest–no spaces–
Left…and someone wasn’t there.
Happily for all concerned
Our parties always reunited,
Some before the jetsam learned
We’d left (at which the rest delighted).
Regardless of attendant drama
In the instant, though, the ghost
Of each and every microtrauma
Haunts me still, from coast to coast.
