A Beat Poet Discovers Buc-cee's

O beaver-headed Buddha of the big highway,

I saw your face on its siren’s call billboard

thirty miles before my soul was ready to

pee or be free—

and the road sang,

pull over, brother, pull over.

Sunset like melted orange vinyl

glinting on the chrome bones of America—

and me,

zooming through the long flat Texas hum

with my heart drumming bop rhythms

on the steering wheel of destiny,

reading your billboards like

scripture on the wind:

RESTROOMS SO CLEAN WE PUT MINTS IN THE URINALS

JERKY: ONE OF THE FIVE BASIC FOOD GROUPS

SEE BEAVER, MUST STOP

—and each sign hit me like a jazz solo,

unrehearsed, unruly,

rising up my spine like a hot trumpet blast.

Then suddenly

WHOOSH

doors part like the Red Sea of air conditioning,

and I am swallowed

whole

by the electric hum of aisle-after-aisle

of snacks & sodas & jerky dreams,

a fluorescent city inside a temple of gasoline.

People whirl by

moms clutching Beaver Nuggets

like souvenirs from Shangri-la,

truckers with brisket baptism sauce

on their thumbs,

children with slushies bright enough

to guide lost sailors home.

O the restrooms!

gleaming steel sanctuaries

shining like the polished teeth

of an enlightened god—

I knelt,

figuratively,

in their stainless grace,

feeling the universe whisper:

cleanliness is next to highwayness.

And the whole place buzzed

with that sweet American OM,

a holy frequency between

the hum of the slush machines

and the brisket slicer’s whisper:

More, more, there is always more.

And I wandered—

O I wandered—

through the labyrinth of neon & novelty:

T-shirts chanting the beaver’s mantra,

smokers large enough for cowboy funerals,

jerky stretching past the farthest

reachable horizon

of a man’s protein-seeking spirit.

I bought a hat.

I bought a magnet.

I bought enlightenment in pecan praline form.

I bought more than I needed

because America said

it’s here, man, it’s all here.

And when I finally

slid out the door

into the dusk-colored wide-open freedom

of Interstate Eternity,

I swear the sky bent low

and whispered in my ear:

Go, Jack—

there are more Buc-cee’s

down the wandering road.

And the beaver,

smiling like a Zen master

who knows the punchline of the universe,

winked as his Mecca

faded behind me.