There was one night,

with the frost working in from the windows' edges,

that the needle was nearly resting on the orange peg.

I was still miles from home,

and I decided to turn off the headlights

to drive by the moon's glow.

There was only the creak of the frame against the cold,

the shuddering of the suspension as the truck crested our Wisconsin hills,

and the alternating roar and rumble of asphalt and gravel

as I crossed county lines.

Suddenly, somehow,

it all became a symphony for me,

and I stopped watching the fuel gauge.

I became warm, comforted by an incoming thought:

regardless if I pulled back up to our house,

I would, tonight, end up Home

— wherever on earth I happened to be.