the darkness when we sleep

it is hitchhiking
and the woman and her two daughters stop
my leg is hurting and she notices
by the way i stand on the onramp
her young daughter, 16 or 17, is smoking and i
watch the smoke curl out of the crack of the window
smoke and this little shitty car that often breaks down
and she says “we know how it is, don’t we?”
and looks at her daughters
it hasn’t been easy for them
very little ever is
and the smoke is pulled through that space
between window and door
it’s dark outside
and i spend the night sleeping up high on a huge
cliff of stone and tall grass
somewhere above the great salt lake
in the darkness i feel so alive and so myself
this is why i do this
i feel so myself
in the morning i scrambled back down a steep embankment
crossed the railroad tracks
and walked through a small field
then along the road back to the
little collection of gas stations and street signs
eventually getting a ride on out of there
with a woman and man
the man had a jersey-like shirt with holes and he was
all about sexy music
and there was a cooler full of cans of cold beer
and we drank them as we drove towards a casino and
they told me about their lives
about meeting and this miniature trip they were taking
they offered me a shower in their room at the casino
i declined because i wanted to hit the onramp
i stayed there all fucking day under the sun
no one stopped and after awhile i walked down the
interstate thinking someone would stop
no one did and after a couple of miles
i walked back
it was almost dark
so i headed into town to fill up with water
i had already scoped out a place to sleep the night
just a bit out of town
but then on a whim i walked up to a tractor trailer
that was parked in the lot of the gas station where i was
going to fill up with water
i asked this short guy with a cowboy hat if
he’d consider giving me a ride if he was
headed west
long story short—he said yes and i had hundreds of miles
of listening to talk of god and vengeance
but i wanna get back to the rocks and the slopes out there above the salt flats
and walking in darkness with a pack
and crossing the cold tracks
and finding this perfect, beautiful space among boulders and grass and moss and the pleasant wind that blew through the night and reminded me of everything i had
ever been
in the morning the sun broke above the horizon and i sat on the edge of the cliff
on a big rock whose surface was rough beneath my fingers
there were low, long clouds pulled out across the horizon and the sun
came up in these
and i knew who i was
and the earth was beautiful
eventually i left and i always
like to look at the ground where i slept
the pressed down grasses starting to reach back up
small rocks, the dirt
and every morning a place where i begin

-f