poems about road trips | Alison McGhee

Poem of the Week, by Michael Miller

Posted on August 3, 2024 by alisonmcghee

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When I was a kid my family went on a long road trip every summer: four kids spread here and there in the station wagon, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. Sleeping bags, pillows, car games like how many different states’ license plates can you spot. Night would fall and the sky filled with stars. Road signs flashed by. The squeak-squeak of wipers pushing back rain. Swish of tires, hum of engine. This was years and years before I took the wheel, years and years before I was responsible for anyone else’s life.

December, by Michael Miller

I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and shut my eyes
while you sit at the wheel,
awake and assured
in your own private world,
seeing all the lines
on the road ahead,
down a long stretch
of empty highway
without any other
faces in sight.
I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and put my life back
in your hands.

Click here for more information about poet Michael Miller. Today’s poem is from his collection College Town, published in 2010 by Tebot Bach Press.
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Poem of the Week, by Gerald Stern

Posted on October 26, 2019 by alisonmcghee

Last week I tucked myself behind a long black semi, far enough back so he could see me and my rattletrap moving truck in his big side mirrors. I do this sometimes on the highway when I’m tired or troubled or just want someone else to take over a little of the decision-making. Truckers (with a few exceptions) are the best drivers out there. They have to be.

After a while, the trucker realized I was following him. In construction zones, he’d slow down a little once we were through, so that I could catch up to him. I was hungry and I had to pee but I didn’t want to lose my trucker, so I kept going. More than two hundred miles in, he put on his blinker for the next exit. Damn. So sad to see him go, sad, somehow, to think I’d never see him again. But he’d gotten me within fifty miles of home. I sped up at the exit ramp to say goodbye, and there he was in the window, smiling down at me, with a thumbs-up and a wave.

Waving Good-Bye, by Gerald Stern

I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,
and turned my head after them as an animal would,
watching helplessly as they drove over the ruts,
her smiling face and her small hand just visible
over the giant pillows and coat hangers
as they made their turn into the empty highway.

For more information on Gerald Stern, please click here.