Traveler

He asked the barmaid, “How much?” but she was busy

listening to a guy trying to sell burner phones so

 

He dropped a few bills on the counter and walked out

into night air.

 

He was somewhere in Pennsylvania and stars

blinked faintly behind the humid haze but still

 

He glimpsed Orion’s Belt, he could trace

the simple frame of the Dipper, 

 

He could hear traffic on the turnpike growling

like an old clock getting ready to strike and

 

He saw the parking lot unroll before him, a blackened

field, big rigs lined up like cows in a barn.

 

He remembered those Holsteins, hulked 

in their stanchions, all sigh and shadow, and

 

He had to smile at himself, always losing

today in the tall grass.

 

He wanted another drink but he had

a long way to drive.

 

He wanted another life

but this was his weedy row to hoe.

 

He thought of calling his wife but his

battery was almost dead.

 

He imagined curling up in the back seat of his car

and never getting to where he was supposed to be.

 

He imagined where he was supposed to be, but instead

traveled back . . . far back . . . to his mother . . .

 

She pins shirts on a line.

Sunlight gilds her broad face.

 

There is no world like the one

we don’t know how to forget.

 

About the Poem:

“The main character in “Traveler” appeared to me very suddenly, almost as if I were looking at him on a stage set. I feel I have written some version of his mother many times, but he was new to me. Nonetheless, I have been thinking forever about the frictions and gaps of memory: how we carry around the past, how it bleeds into our private vision of the world.”

About the Poet:

Dawn Potter’s most recent poetry collection is Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, 2024). A finalist for the National Poetry Series, she has also won a Maine Literary Award in nonfiction. Her poems and essays appear in the Beloit Poetry Journal, the Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Dawn directs poetry programs at Monson Arts and lives in Portland, Maine.