I’m going to keep writing
about the Airport Road
till I get it right.

Till the radio plays
the exact song I need
to remember the smell

of the pines
in the breeze
as the wood panel station wagon

speeds along. Windows rolled down.
My mother and her lead foot.
I come from a family of lead feet.

While they put the pedal
to the metal, I press my foot firmly
on an imaginary brake

till it bangs against
the back seat floorboard,
till I give up. Resume

watching the world go by.
Always humming something,
this time it’s

“scoot down the road
what’s my number
I wonder how your engines feel”

Not the song
but a good one
to begin with.

In reality, you
were probably too young
to hitchhike

the last time
we pick up my father
from the tiny airport

in a clearing
in the woods.

If I am 9,
you are 13.
Too young.

Then I read maps
will need to be redrawn.

An iceberg the size of Delaware
has broken off the Antarctic Peninsula.

The age of hitchhikers
seems so insignificant

compared to the future
of seacoasts everywhere.

Think of Billingsgate Shoal
used to be Island.