Fly-over Quilting

I feel like finding America.

I feel like flying low over the countryside from end to end and back again,

Like tracking every patchwork field through the airplane window

And tracing every interstate exit to a strip mall

Marked by cars moving in slow, silent symphony

So far below.

I feel like finding America, suddenly.

I want to touch each of the corners of this irregular that every school child can draw,

I want to see more than just industrial complexes from the airport window –

I want to see the land. The burger joints and forests and every arching bridge.

I feel like finding America. I want to know it.

I want Midwesterners to be more than a TV show, I want them to be a face.

I want travel to be more than the distance between a slats deploy and landing gear –

I want it to be a memory. A person. The twang in a voice.

I feel like finding America, now.

What other country could be more separate? More divisive?
Where else could I know nothing of two thirds of my nation,

Yet feel so protective of their individual lives

And so possessive of our unity?

I feel like finding America.

I feel like filling in the patchwork of fly-over states

With a patchwork of people and places and reality,

And marking out my path in a quiet, trailing line

Of red embroidery thread.

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