Poem

It's  April, National Poetry Month so here goes;


I remember that Summer
I must have been eight
jammed into the back seat
of my parents Nova
with my sister and the red metal cooler
filled with root beer
and real beer
for impromptu stops
on the side of the road

We stopped once
at a roadside cafe
we hoped would have hamburgers
and a bathroom
but it was closed
and the desolate
abandoned look of the place
Still  makes me wonder how long it had been closed
and if they owners just walked away from it
we stood on the wooden porch
a very long time
as if
 in waiting
we could cause someone to appear.

No Air conditioning in that car
we rolled down the windows and held on
on those back roads through the desert
that my dad preferred,
the ones that rose and fell like
an endless roller coaster
ultimately,
I got sick and they had to stop
and dose me with
car-sickness medicine
which I swallowed
with the now-hot root beer
the carbonation like needles in my mouth
and my throat
It made me sleepy
they had to carry me to the motel room.
Those rooms always smelled
like stale coca-cola
and old cigarettes
the air conditioner had that peculiar
chemical taint
that seeped into the pillows
and the inevitable chenille bedspreads
that always seemed to be part of the motel landscape
in 1966