In this week’s poem, “Road Trip with Thistle,” Sherry Abaldo takes us driving down a country road, racing alongside wildflower and memory. I love this poem’s sense of speed and breathless expanse, and the motif of the thistle—indelible in its flower and its thorn.
Sherry Abaldo’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, ONE ART, Rattle, SWWIM, Down East, and on The History Channel and PBS. She also works as a researcher, with her latest effort in that vein due March 2026 in the World War II nonfiction work The Dangerous Shore. A Maine native from Union, she currently lives with her husband in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Midcoast.
Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.
Road Trip with Thistle
Field after field, Holsteins graze on waves of grass
with goldenrod and purple thistle puffs – royal
carpet split by blacktop – no idea
where we’ll end up. Our past a Wile E. Coyote and
the Roadrunner cartoon. Our
future smudged emulsion, blue as the
sea I come from. Thistles hardy, spread like
lupine, kudzu. You say I’m from the desert, what do
I know, that’s why I love the mountains. I say I need
the sea. You tell me I need a lot of things, like
Millay I might end up falling
down a flight of stairs
with a bottle of red wine, head hived with
desire, shards of poems. I say I gave
all that up, no figs from thistles for me,
no dates or guavas either.
Desperado follows Despacito on the stereo.
Miles fly by, my window down. The air the
blue the speed. I want to
stop and cup a thistle in my hand,
spikes too,
caress its thready flower, calyx pulp.
I’m back in high school bio,
giggling over stamen, pistil.
You remind me of all the grocery store
orchids I failed to keep alive.
Long way to go before a motel.
Dusk and everything is fading into one thing.
From here on I only want to love what is unkillable:
your memory, the fields, the road, the thistle.
– Sherry Abaldo
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Road Trip with Thistle,” copyright 2025 by Sherry Abaldo, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.