What compelled us to go,
every summer

filling up
the Dodge Caravan,

ice chests in the back
thumping

like the drums
that start High Noon,

do not forsake me oh my darling,

was it the emptiness of the West,

the rock in Colorado gray
as the early films

supposedly set there,

was it those tales
of cowboys and justice

that drew my mother
out to Laramie,

was it the dichotomy

of a long-held dream
and lackluster reality

that led her to cry in
some motel parking lot

in some dusty washed-up
tourist trap town,

and should we have gone back
and lived a coward, a craven coward, 

or should we have gone on

to Utah, to Zion, not afraid of death,

untouchable

as we hurtled through alien
landscapes, to Craters of the Moon,

the lower Sonoran,
as Rand McNally led us,

get along, get along but why

this Gary Cooper sadness,
and why,

oh why this love
of leaving?