Tuesday, October 23, 2007

A simple song

The folk song rolls along
like a ball of twine
its tune twisted simply with the strings
of harmony everywhere hanging like fur
to keep us warm

Some melodies reach into your throat
and bid you sing simply note for note
in intervals like the lines of hills
that fade away behind the train we ride
wheels spinning like wax cylinders melting into our throats
I love you like that, just like that.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Memory against the American West

the storage room for hospital beds
and equipment for the spine patients
on the seventh floor of the hospital
smells exactly like my grandparents'
truck-bed camper did

in which as a youngster I was made acquainted with the West
in which my grandmother rode with a sprained ankle
because I begged to see an old fort my grandpa called a tourist trap
and she fell on the path

in which my siblings and grandparents crowded for the night
at a rest area in Utah, and when some rowdy young fella's
pulled up alongside us I was not afraid
as my grandpa loaded the pistol kept under his pillow

I was made acquainted with the West
the long empty space
distilled into a certain odor which rests now in this
hospital storage closet
and brings back memories in this Proustian fashion
memories which are tinged with the regret of how the old must die
and we young do not call, do not visit
did not even realize through all the long dusty roads of
the dry West, the empty West, that we had love then
love like the antelope we strained to glimpse against the barren brown

when I too grow old and all life has grown full
of these memories which are too hard to hold onto anymore
when my mind begins to travel with no map and my eyes begin to sink
I will perhaps long for that empty, empty rest on empty roads out West,
and I will give up this double life, even at the risk that the strength
of memories themselves will fail as I depart.