We drove West on I-80 across Wyoming

when we stopped to rest along the road

Three tee-pees stood in a ravine beside a bluff

Laramie was nowhere in sight beyond the fields of trailers

as a hungry young man tried to sell his old guitar

for gas money to cross the state so vast.

We bought two Hank Williams tapes and left on the road long and vast.

Hank sang about Hell and New York City as we crossed Wyoming.

Morning music rang out as we traveled that road

sunshine, clouds, golden fields and the burnt red bluffs

abandoned farm houses and rusty trailers

trucks roll by past an Indian with a guitar.

Can you get to California by selling a guitar?

It’s a long way off.  This country is so vast.

I’m passing through Wyoming

with my mind on Dixie and the days I walked a Georgia red-dirt road–

red, bloody red, like the red of the Wyoming bluffs–

far from the Appalachian mountains, I smile and pass the trailers.

Towered rocks and scrubby pines behind trailers.

16 MILES FROM LARAMIE, Hank sings and plays his guitar.

MEDICINE BOW JUST AHEAD – the country is so vast.

Three black cows graze the high country in Wyoming.

They don’t look up as I pass by on the road.

A country boy dreams beneath the bluff.

We descend into the ravine cut through a sheer rock bluff.

On the plain ahead I can see a trailer.

I think of the California-bound cowboy and his old guitar.

Road signs, bridges, blue hills, far and vast,

Cowboys, horses in corrals, all in Wyoming

Along the I-80 Interstate road.

Abandoned wood houses cluster along this road.

They say the Indians found shelter under the bluff.

Now, I can only see the clutter of rusted metal trailers

And I hope the cowboy gets cash for his guitar.

It’s a long drive to California – so harsh and vast

And the road gets rugged riding through Wyoming.