Love, Thea Koller

A few months ago, I was skyping with Dad and he read me this poem. He teared up in the middle of it and his voice cracked. Thinking back on that, it falls in place that we are now in the MidWest, and that all of this happened while he was on a road trip with those engines running.

Untitled - 1987

The real world stretches between mountains.

Big rivers run through it.

On summer nights it is lighted by fireflies.

 

In the real world

small towns are filled with kids eating icecream.

Their moms wear cotton dresses

and talk of the children to come.

(I hear laughter as the sun goes down)

Late at night after the kids are asleep

there is cold apple pie and hot black coffee.

 

(I smell the gasoline - hear the engines running

engines that never stop

that run from mountains to mountains

out over the flat land

through the dark nights

over the steel big river bridges

through the blinking fireflies)

 

The real world is one I've carried within me -

forty years gone by and the engines still turn

and the wheels they drive still turn and drive me

and carry me through these summer nights

 

(I hear the women in their cotton dresses laughing)

and there will never be another world

quite the same.