C

Scene from a highway in the desert,
I let the car drift some,
Eye your uncomfortable pose and profile,
The postures of long drives.
Shifting numb and sore parts
When you can no longer sit them.
Foot on the dash, foot on the dash,
X hours or so from some somewhere now,
Only half aware when I change lanes half accidentally
Vision fixed in the distance, identifying wildflowers
And then I almost touch your leg,
But something stays me.
The economy of love and close quarters,
A learned thing.
In contrast I am marked quietly alone.
Of the small rented spaces we have slept in,
Tents even sometimes,
In this tiny capsule.
But hurtling uncertain into the inferno of forever of here.
Which it does to me, the desert.
It has effect, makes me mark things needlessly.
In the immensity of an even breath is all I guess,
Overamplifying,
Overconnecting,
Makes me see all small simplicities
Significant, Substancial,
Makes me seek out symbolism
Search in the symmetry for some lost stigmas of the self.
These words that hiss and makes snake sounds
But it feels holy almost, though I dont say so.
A native sense, but not skeletons and headdresses.
No projections found in
Thunder clouds shaped by soundless lightning
It is an extra sense
A kind of costal thing
Unnamable and great
An immortal unknowing
Sacred in ancestry but really will only be felt here when the sun falls
What we felt here and now
Would be that otherworldly haunts
Of coming dusk descending from immeasurable spaces
To more measurable spaces
And each and endless desert sprawl anarchic forever
Interupted only by this highway to the west
Some wound may be are abandoned depending on how you look at it
Or maybe just what must marry the two vast expanses
A mirror reflecting both sides
Or a path more than anything
But who cares what.
A bridge through the history
Of a place where a watch doesnt work
A guide through wider spaces than the baggage of unclaimed except in concrete
A place only unclaimed
Except in one day, Sunday,
You and I, for us.
Where we get to the route is where we are going
Then you speak one in the love
Single landmark
In memorial now,
And the landscape that always passes but never passes,
Does finally.
And we see time again
For remember the mirror pointing backwards
All of the sudden watching the paintbrush shrinking at last light.
And then I think again to touch your leg,
But something stays me,
Some voice, yours and mine, combined,
And the rain that comes sang quiet
First and then just sit
So I crack my window just so,
And almost close my eyes and almost let go of the steering wheel, but don't.
It feels impossible to crash the car while we're in it.