Terri Paul

The Open Road

Cast your fate to the wind in my hair and
Vince Guaraldi’s mighty piano, music
on the radio that drowns out the roar
of glass packs on this royal blue
spring afternoon.

My best friend’s new Thunderbird
convertible zooms to eighty miles per
along an empty country road,
our shared past as narrow as the
covered bridge

we tear across, burning rubber;
our future as infinite as the asphalt
ribbon of unknown we crave,
wheels hardly grazing
the pavement,

because we’re eighteen and we think
we could be brilliant, we could be tall,
we could be strong, we could be brave,
we could be beautiful, we could be
anything.