A Late Ode on the Farm-to-Market Road
Chris Ellery
May 22, 2022
for Terry Dalrymple
Never resting interstates rush us to a funeral.
Trucks in the left lane, cars that won’t move over,
traffic merging like mercury bumper to bumper,
speed traps, death traps, damaged guardrails,
clunkers abandoned, the right lane closed,
orange cones and concrete barriers, flashing cruisers,
a biker pulled over and hand-cuffed on the shoulder.
While our friend waits to be buried, we curse
all the hazards and every impediment to time and speed.
No wonder we wish for a warp in this dimension,
a tunnel to where an hour is relative, a portal
through which some friendly alien descends
just to fetch us in a battered pick up
for a beer in Luckenbach. What if gravity
could not bend light? What if the heart
of the galaxy was a park and not a black hole?
After planting our friend in that urban garden
of granite monuments and plastic flowers,
we think of his smile under a broad sky,
and we suddenly know our need
for a farm-to-market road threading through ranches—
cattle and horses in pastures green as Eden
under the blue of blooming May, chinaberry,
catalpa, cottonwood, purple thistle
bursting from junk cars, front porch rockers,
beans and tomato vines in front yard gardens.
O endless ribbon of light, band of the Milky Way,
let us drift on you like a lazy river through big country
blessing everything along your shores.
Bless the barbed wire, tractors, lonely houses.
Slow arroyos with board and rail bridges.
Oil pumps, gas wells. Weathered wood windmills
beside muddy stock tanks. Bless the towns
barely towns with chain-link yards, roses,
redbud, crape myrtle, pecan, a church and a diner,
barbecue, sweet tea and peach cobbler,
old folks and children and helpful neighbors.
Bless cactus and yucca. Rabbits, dove,
and deer in the bar ditch. And, yes, let us bless
even the roadkill and buzzards.
For beatitude is a two-lane road singing
like a minstrel under turning tires.
Singing of here and now.
Singing of rolling vistas.
Singing of how the journey is good
and how we’re sure to reach our destination.
Singing of how the best boons are often out of the way.
Singing to us as we go with our windows down
singing along, talking and laughing, admiring horizons,
happy to be heading in the general direction of home,
but in no hurry.
Chris Ellery is author of five poetry collections, including The Big Mosque of Mercy, Elder Tree, and, most recently, Canticles of the Body. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he has received the X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Dora and Alexander Raynes Prize for Poetry, the Betsy Colquitt Award, and the Texas Poetry Award.
