I’m sitting in a hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. The rain is drizzling outside. It’s dark. Liza and I were in the car from 8 am until 6. We drove through the Blue Ridge and the Applachian Mountains. We ate Mexican food at a little town in southern Virginia. We listened to two CD’s of poetry with Sandburg, Auden, St. Vincent Millay, T.S. Eliot, Langston Huges, H.D., and more. We talked about our writing projects, our kids, friends, her enrollment in the MFA program at Lesley University. Claudine (that’s what we call the satellite navigator in her car) kept us on track telling us in her calm, but insistent voice, when to turn right or left, what exit to take and exactly how many miles and how many minutes to our destination. We talked about the heart chakra and Tony Hoagland and how road trips give you a chance to examine your thoughts and allow fresh input into sometimes stale brain cells. I got a motto for the upcoming week from a Langston Hughes poem “Deeds cannot know what dreams can do.” Oh, my God, if this could only be broadcast throughout the land–downloaded onto every IPod, MP3 player, computer and run across the bottom of the daily news–what a different world it would be. We ate sushi and salad and veggies with rice for dinner, checked our email and our phones and now we’re at rest until tomorrow and the adventure begins as we get settled in our little cabins, hang our clothes in the closet, put our almond milk and blueberries and tofu in the fridge, make the bed, set out a candle or two, stack the books on the desk, set up the computer, pull out a pen, a notebook, stare out the window at something new, something we’ve never seen before. Tomorrow is full of possibilities, just as today was and as every day will be, because that’s what we feed on, as much as air or water or food or love…be they grand or be they humble, we must have possibilities, or we have nothing, we only trudge along…we do not sing, never dream. Wow! That got heavy all of a sudden. Well, here’s to dreams and possibilities and blue, smoky mountains and sushi and a good night’s sleep on a tempurpedic bed with down pillows and cotton sheets!

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
…Langston Hughes

The photos below were taken at the rest stop right after we crossed over the Tennessee state line. They had a whole visitors center there with brochures for all the sites in Tennessee, including Dollywood, which Liza was keen on going to. (I’m going to get in big trouble for that one.) They also had the highest rating so far on the trip for bathroom cleanliness and fragrance…and that’s no small thing to accomplish.