Leaving Kansas with Jimi by Ken Gierke

No crosstown traffic here.

We’re talking cross country.

Yellow fields on the left,

yellow fields on the right,

a foot tall and waiting for a chance

to be in your next wheat beer.

Driving into the morning sun,

you thought you were leaving

gray skies behind, but when you see

that straight and narrow ribbon of a road

disappear at the crest of a hill

four miles ahead framed by black sky

punctuated by jagged bolts of lightning

you know there won’t be any magic

carpet in this electric lady land.

The rain starts slow and lazy at first

as Jimi’s guitar dances with a sax,

but five minutes later, you drive into

a rainy day that may as well be

a long hot summer night and wish

it was all a daydream. Rain lashes

your windshield, and thirty feet

is the farthest you can see,

so you slow to thirty and hope

you’re still pointed straight ahead.

But then, as if tonight’s full moon

was turning the tides gently away,

you burst through the last of it

to find a patch of blue sky

as you head out of Kansas,

thankful to have that behind you

and looking forward to that beer.

Ken Gierke is a retired truck driver, transplanted to mid-Missouri from Western New York. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming both in print and online in such places as Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, Silver Birch Press, The Gasconade Review and River Dog Zine. Glass Awash, published by Spartan Press, is his first collection of poetry. His website: https://rivrvlogr.com/