Thanksgiving journey

Where the trip begins
The hills fall away
Like rumpled sheets on a morning bed.
Time to get up, sleepy head,
And the Flint, she flees away
Running out of the room
On past Thomaston and Butler
And Ellaville, on and on,
Rushing to the dying of the orange sun.

When the hills peter out,
The cotton fields then begin
And this cool November evening
Hides the lint in the ditches
The bolls stacked in blocks
On the side of Highway 19,
And the Flint, she flows on
Under the shadow of the Windsor Hotel
On through downtown Albany to the sea.

The Christmas decorations
Are draped across the country courthouses,
Standing solemnly at the stoplight
At the center of town after town;
Every thirty minutes, or so, a break
From the darkness and the stars
On our Thanksgiving journey
Through South Georgia to the sea.

And the Flint and I are running,
Growing stronger as the year grows shorter
And we are drifting on to the Gulf
Through the pinewoods of Florida,
Driving on through the growing nothingness.
The stars above us are just a gentle light,
For we both know our way southward
To the place to lay our heads by the sea.

The Gulf is so pretty;
Here where the rivers come to offer
Their bounty and provide shelter
For the families of shrimp and the oyster-beds;
The gulls scream in the Autumn wind
And the tides still crash like cannon on the sands.
Come closer, sweet thing, hold my hand,
And share a moment of deep heart solace,
The end of our journey, the end of this day,
Asleep in the tangle of rumpled bed sheets
Below the starry night, the thrashing waves,
The moonlight reflecting on the crystal sands.