The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2008

Crossing Iowa

Traffic is lighter west of Chicago.  By the time

I cross the Mississippi into Iowa, only a lone truck

is ahead of me on the straight line of I-80. 

The truck and I drive towards a storm.  Like a painting

by Van Gogh, the yellow fields are topped

by black clouds and a fork of lightning.

This is farm country.  A tractor raises a line of dust

over a fallow field and the wind makes sea waves

across tassels of early corn.

We hum along, ignoring the speed limit,

a two-vehicle convoy.  At the I-80 truck stop,

my companion turns off and I drive on alone.

I'd stop too, but Iowa City is only half an hour

further and I know where I can buy a cheap breakfast

and sit by the river watching flower petals float by. 

After breakfast, I travel the walking bridges that criss-

cross the river.  On one, a plaque commemorates a student

who dove off and drowned.  A swift life, a swifter current.

Back on the freeway, fields of corn pass

in ripening miles, silos loom large, Des Moines

beckons.   The storm hits at last,

rain hitting my windshield so hard

that I must pull off the road.  I find

a concrete piece of shoulder and turn off the engine.

The wipers stop mid-window.  I am surrounded by water,

cascading and thundering around my dry cocoon. 

I can no longer see past the driving rain on the windshield. 

As the storm dries and sun shafts strike

the sloping fields, I wonder if I would have had

the strength to face months of travel over dry plains

just to start these fields with hand plow and horses.  Yet,

something still compels me on, even in this time

of comfort, to seek the next bend in the road.

Aline Soules