Once salt was the power to cross the unmapped 

and sidle up to the one hauling the story

of why the caravan was moving, and where. Once 

story was a song that mapped the rising horizon 

and water the reason to pitch houses of hair

or load everything on shoulders. Once alone 

was shieldlessness, prelude to danger. Once God 

was mountain thunder, or drought, or floods, 

something to sacrifice a child to, the fist of justice

slowly opening. Then God was a flaming shrub, then

a tickle in your insomniac ear. Once forgetfulness

was waking hungover, alarmed, driving to a dying

factory in a Rust Belt town. Then it was running

past empty in the middle of winter, testing the limits 

of emptiness. Once there were highway robbers. Then 

freeways with toll plazas, oases of hamburgers, temples 

of the mavens of convenience. Once perpetuity

was an aquiline profile hewn from marble or stone.  

Then a map of everything you named yourself 

after yourself. Then it was writing your name

in cold Pacific iambic. Then a yacht, a kilo of blow,

bikini stock options. And now it’s becoming 

one’s own constellation, unlit planets orbiting

to bask in your light. Once bridges were ice roads,

and the bride of the sea was the name of a city.

Once a wall was meant to slow invaders. Now 

deserts move faster than future, but still can’t

catch up to history. In twilight, along unlit highway,

sweatshop workers plow the breakdown lane, skitter

four-lane asphalt to dirt-floor villages, white tees 

gleaming in headlights like doe eyes. Once existence 

was hand to mouth. Then it was stone oven. Then 

nostalgia for hunger, weight watching. Then driving

not knowing where you were going. Then driving, 

not knowing and no longer caring. Once the car

began to shake so hard we thought it was laughing.

Then we thought it was dying, and we were

going to die. All it needed was tires. Once feet were

tires. Once hands were wipers, cup-holders, car-seats,

horns. Once scarves were windshields, veils for eyes

reflecting the road ahead and the road they rode 

to arrive in the middle of things, not wondering about the end.