On The Road

• Ryan Huynh, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2022

Halfway to Canberra, soft rain patters against the windshield.
If I sleep, I miss the world around me;
silent hills, lurching cattle and quotidian stone walls.
I want to believe there is something golden, rested,
hidden and beautiful in the world around me
so I stare sleep in its eyes,
fighting its grasp from all directions,
looking for a glimmer in the herd of woolly sheep.

With a coffee, shielding me, waking me, feeling me—
tertiary. Halfway from home,
the hotel runs dry, where do I sleep tonight?

Halfway from home,
the road is tarnished
and halfway to Canberra— clear.