The Rand McNally Blues

I was searching the lines of a book for answers when the car entered a new state. The name of the state was Summer, and we were cruising through it for several miles before I finally looked up. Like Iowa and Georgia before, the landscape was hardly any different. I should have recognized it immediately from dozens of road trips past, the ramshackle snow cone stands and rusted gas station oases, grass longer than a mother's hair, swifts and swallows skimming the erupted roots. Yet too much had changed: someone built a silver skyscraper on a distant ridge, the dust was less flavorful, and inside my head the clockwork cogs had been swapped out for a pulsing atom of quartz. To be honest, I felt comforted that I could burn the book anytime, let its ashes trail out the passenger window without a care. But that book was our atlas, and the roads aren't well marked, and lately I think all the compasses point inward. A fork is inevitable, but for now it's Red Arrow Highway all day.