Drive My Urn to Dollywood

in the backseat of Aunt Lu's ice cream
white 1975 Lincoln Continental. Drive slow,
follow the scenic Kentucky byway through Mud
Lick, pass the grassy old drive-in theater just before
the Tennessee state line, roll through Livingston
and crooked Overton County,
where I sat one July afternoon in a crowded second

floor courtroom with broken air
conditioning. A fat sweaty judge
said Land Sakes Alive and dismissed me
after twenty minutes.

Go the Wears Valley route,
beat traffic the back way into Pigeon Forge.
Stop in Sevierville, take a picture of my urn balanced
on the head of the bronze Dolly Parton statue. Powder her nose

with some of my ashes. Say a prayer for me,
thank that air conditioner for breaking
down. Continue to Dollywood, wait in line for the Tennessee
Tornado, scribble a haiku in my memory,

then sit in the very last row of the roller
coaster, hold the cover of my urn tight until you corkscrew
through the last butterfly loop. When you're upside
down at the top let my ashes fly.

*Stephen Roger Powers won an Academy of American Poets Prize while working on his PhD in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. To help cover the costs of graduate school he moonlighted as a stand-up comedian in clubs and casinos around the Midwest. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Margie, Smartish Pace, 32 Poems, and the University of Iowa Press anthology Red, White, and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America, among others. He teaches at Marian College of Fond du Lac, but spends most of his free time at Dollywood.