Road Tripping

Dreams on the Autobahn

Road Tripping

By Eve Zennarrow

On the road,
sitting in the passenger seat,
looking through the window,
I notice every little nothing
along the way.

Bare trees look like blood vessels
floating in a cloud of fog.
Roadkill has been carefully
placed on the side of the road.
Small icicles are flying off
truck rooftops
(one just narrowly avoided
our car’s windshield — phiw!).

A rider on a motorcycle
is stretching his leg.
A bumper sticker on the caravan
says: Eat my snow.
Funny.

I can never sleep
while I’m traveling.
Too much to see,
to hear, to read,
to invent.

It’s uncanny how steadily
the world unravels around you,
while you’re constricted
to your seat.

There’s congestion
on the German motorway,
and I can see on the
display of the car next to ours
that they are listening to
The Cranberries’ Dreams.
That brings a smile to my face,
and I start to sing
over our own car music:

“Oh, my life
is changing every day
in every possible way…”

I think of Chungking Express,
where, so fittingly,
Faye Wong sings
a cover version of this song,
and the scene plays
in my head where she
breaks into the apartment
of the guy she likes
and redecorates
without him noticing.

I wonder if the people
in the car beside ours
have seen the movie.
I almost want to roll down
the window and ask them.

I don’t.
Of course I don’t.

I just shut my eyes
for a second,
my smile still lingering.

Any moment now
the car will start moving again,
and something new will happen.

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Brave New Chord (my book of poetry with a soundtrack)