#vanlife

You’re living the dream.
Living the dream.
Dream the living.
Dreaming the live.
Dreaming. Live, you’re The.

A hundred times heard
and it stops making sense.

No rest stops yet.
Boat launches; trailheads; a reservoir in Wyoming green with algae bloom; the weight of Utah’s first snow felling a cottonwood up-road.

You should start a Youtube channel.
Youtube should channel you.
You channel tube? Starts should a you.

That one too.

Fog filling the space between Washington trees; a lake in September looked like grandma because birthdays are immortal; a squirrel, a bird, a ghost–something walked on the roof in the morning.

It’s tiring
calling everyplace home.

The birds writing on powerlines
have longer tails here.
Grackles stay common.
And crows.
They become my new favorites.

Why do we love the familiar?

Yellowstone coyotes brawled and laughed the night no one asked us to leave; a mouse moved in while we were out tracing the paths of glaciers; kept in a friend’s attic waiting for necks to snap.

Who cares about poetry.
No one’s binge-eating poetry.
Can’t live vicariously in poetry.

Hidden wind chimes at a Montana trailhead sounded like not being alone when we thought we were; only after finding them did they ring with a kind of sweet abandonment.

You’re living the dream.
I don’t correct them.

First Published in Fever Dream, Winter 2022 Issue