Heading East

by Robert Hogg

Just heading east to Toronto
on my way to New York
City by way of
Buffalo where this poet
I know is teaching . . .
I tell the young
newlyweds hot in
their big American
sedan fresh
from Honeymoon
Vancouver English
Bay in October
who pick me up
in the foothills
west of Calgary
near the end
of day and drop
me off past
town they’ll
pick me up
next morning
if I haven’t
hitched a ride
the young wife
says and sure enough
next day I
roll out of
my sleeping bag
groggy and numb
with cold stand
with thumb out
beside the Trans–Canada
Highway and there
they are and this
goes on another
day and night as we wing
across the prairie the couple
fighting gently in the front
seat about this strange
young interloper
in the back offering
to drive but Don the affable
husband says
no dice this is
his car his
trip despite
what Sandy wants
and what she wants
is to know more about
the kid they’ve picked up
the poetry he writes what
he plans to do in
New York but me
I’ve got the back seat
all to myself
and I’m happy
watching the sun
go down (you don’t
get a ride like this
every day
and now that sun
is a ball of fire
behind us
as we drive across
a Manitoba
prairie knows
no end
But there is
an end and it’s a big
full moon rises blood
red somewhere east
of Brandon the sun
still burning my neck
from behind and this
uncanny
counterpart of fire
a twilight moon
beams through
the windshield
the car
whirling into it
stars
taking up their
spaces
in the dark above
constellations
forming as the moon
burns red, turns
out of earth, comes
round in the air–
fire above prairie
almost liquid
white and round now
losing its blood
red glow
Night
cools into headlights
Flame
falls into white
moon–disc and star
The car
hurls into and
across Ontario tires
whirring the pavement
speed somehow
a sacrilege the road
whipping away
a kind of trespass
in the night
we rush so
blindly through
roaring down to
Toronto where
they’ve offered
to drop me
somewhere near
the Y but it’s way
too late to go in
so they leave me at an all
night diner good luck
in their eyes and head on
home to Brantford
or was it suburban
Oakville
and a cosy bed
I saunter in
to the diner
grab a stool drop
my duffle bag
by the counter order
a coffee and roll
a cigarette
when some guy
sidles over
offers me a light
and a place to stay
so I think to myself
the folks in
this town
are so damned
friendly but that
turns out to be
more than I thought
it would be