A Cumulous of Company
---- Big Frank Dickinson

The open road is flat and gray, winding
Somewhat with broken stripes that mark
That center, keeping you to some middle
Course that you set for yourself
Some time ago, with some prefixed goal
Of one sort or another, and the grind,
The whining finds you rolling along with
No more thought of the glory that accompanies
Your journey than the thought given that
That you are a glorious accompaniment to someone else.
Still they are with you as surely as the clouds
Above and in the same way as their everychanging
Configurations they ecompass you within
Their beauty; your friends' constant but changing
Interactions is your unique but often unnoticed skyscape.
The true beauty of the course is marked
By them; their impressions mark our
Days, as surely as our connections mark theirs.
Look not just where you are going, but also
Who it is that is traveling with you for that is the
Beuaty you're in; it's not the road - it's the
Cumulous of company that travels with you.

[Photo by Big Frank Dickinson: just west of Deer Lodge, Montana]