Jerry Kilbride

Once the Traveler

heat lightning—
   all the way into Mexico
      the mountains rise

Michael McClintock

Memory triggered of a day spent in Loredo . . . September 1955 on the way south to Mexico City . . . sweating stark naked and trying to catch the slightest breeze coming through the windows of an old colonnaded hotel at the edge of town . . . the searing sunlight in the vastness of Texas bouncing off the walls . . . the arid desert reaching the crumbling building from beyond forever . . . way beyond forever . . . and heat lightning the day after Laredo as a Transportes del Norte bus rumbles in dust down the traces of a concrete highway toward that old brewery of a town called Monterrey . . . then the hills . . . the cold air and green mountains of the Valley of Mexico . . . the volcanoes . . . yeah, the montage of John Steinbeck and Tennessee Williams in the good company of a haiku poet . . . wayward busses and antebellum flophouses and McClintock encapsulating the last chapter of Kerouac’s On the Road . . . and , next thing you know, the old man who once was the traveler is again lifting a few brews—el tiempo—in one of those student hangouts on Garibaldi Square . . . Guadalajara el Noche . . . Tenampa . . . Mexico Tipico . . . Oiga, senor, otra cerveza, por favor!