Route 66

Tucumcari, New Mexico

TUCUMCARI 

When dreams turn dark the vultures dance

They feed on the eyes of a newborn calf
And pick the highway clean
Making love to rotting flesh

Ink black stains on pale sky

Their shadows sweep the desert dust
Hard to tell a vulture 
From a loitering drone

Poor vulture

The only bird without romance
But watch them swoon
In the canopy of blue they own
Making winds visible 
Riding the vapes

Strip it away 

The stringy moist things
Droop and flem 
The stench of road kill
There’s an ugliness in fear
Vultures don’t kill

Black winged wedge of sky

Keeping the road crews company 
And me
Tucumcari

Route 66

Texas Panhandle

“I won’t listen to the weather report.  I’ll let the question of snow hang.  Answers only dull the senses.  Even answers that are right often make what they explain uninteresting.  In nature the answers are always changing.  Rain to snow.  Nature can let the mysterious things alone.  The way we don’t fall off the earth at night when we look up at the North Star.  The way we know this may not always be so.”

-from the poem “Report From the West” by Tom Hennen

“I’m a lousy escapist.  Troubles of the world roll off my back.  The only talent I have is to be able to smell each new season before it comes in the hair of women.”

-from the poem “A Note to My State-Appointed Job Counselor” by Tom Hennen

Galisteo, New Mexico

“Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks, which can easily be seen if you look closely.  But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than people.  For some reason we want to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t care to reach our last one for a long time.  We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will start for real.”

            -from the poem “The Life of a Day” by Tom Hennen

Cerrillos, New Mexico

“Getting off the bus just as the duck drops out of a V in late autumn with some unfinished business up north.”

-from the poem “Getting Off the Bus” by Tom Hennen

Galisteo, New Mexico

“Rain begins first deep inside where I can smell the dust I’m made of.”

-from the poem “A Note to My State-Appointed Job Counselor” by Tom Hennen

Route 66

Tucumcari, New Mexico

“I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads
So I wouldn't get weighed”

“Willin” by Little Feat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wppytmGE6lM