We passed them on southbound I-95,
not far from Jupiter: a caravan
of weather-worn RVs, the kind you drive
from park to park towards your winter tan.
Wisconsin license plates meant they had driven
for days—back-straining, patience-taxing days.
The hard work of vacationing had given
the drivers’ eyes a highway-haunted glaze
and must have left their necks in knots. What’s worse,
here in the “Sunshine State” it had been raining,
and we could almost hear the drivers curse;
the engines, too, were probably complaining.
We waved at them, but none waved back; each one
stared straight ahead, in search of mythic sun.
About the author
Jean L. Kreiling prefers traveling by foot, and has been fortunate to stroll along London streets, Italian cliffsides, and countless American beaches. Her poems…
Read the full bioIssue 12 · June 2011
Table of contents
More from The Journal
- Postcard Prose
By Kelly Hill
Trying to wrap my mind around living on a tropical island for thirteen years and never once seeing the ocean, I stumbled through my Indonesian vocabulary to say, It’s good. It’s big.
- Travel Notes
By Sandra Larson
A dinosaur dangles over my grandson at the Field Museum near a pink thumb that pops into the prom picture of my granddaughter dressed in strapless red leaving her house in Medina …
- Travel Notes
By Megan Hallinan
The bill in question is actually a 2,000 West African franc note, and it’s the equivalent of about four U.S. dollars. A helpful sum, really, but as I clutch the weathered crinkle in my sweaty palm, its value feels as dirty as the grime that is undoubtedly being transferred to my fingers.
- Poetry
to Egg and Berry brewery, to the pack / of Czechy words I made but didn’t work / in this pink town. I’d readily go back / to your best spots, the unfired gun, that perk //
- Poetry
By Jason Warren
And if the neap tides of my beauty / sadden him, I cannot help it: / I hang high, the waxy night light …
- Poetry
By Anastasia Vassos
Three thousand ancestors ask how I straddle / the sea, a foot on either shore. //
Read more Poetry or Postcard Prose