Autobiogeography

Rolling around North America

Like a marble in a dog food bowl,

Unclean, inedible, out of place,

Half choking hazard, half comical—

King Jesus Saves Organic Firewood

For Sale. So many ways to make hay

In a tattered flag draped USA,

While Canada’s Euclidean proof

Difference has similar things to say—

Moss eats EGGS off a barn’s painted roof

Outside Swastika, Ontario,

And in BC, signs sunk in woods

Insist they’re possessed by carpentry.

A buck walks by an aging motel

In Susanville, California.

One of his antlers has fallen off

And he seems alert to the traffic

Slipping a bit in late season snow.

In central Nevada, bighorn sheep

Consider a road cut through a cliff.

The more boring signs are everywhere,

Coast to coast to coast, candidate signs

For would-be mayors, town and county

Legislators, the grim reminders

Of past presidential elections

Looking even rattier than flags.

The largest billboards are best ignored.

What exactly are we watching for?

Spot a sign, splatter an ungulate.

Proves you both were watching the wrong thing.

Words themselves will tell you all these words

Don’t fool anything. But keep driving.