Trying
to Get Home Sept 13, 2001 by Jean C. Howard || Author's Links |
I As I travel across the United States flags flicker at half-mast like the tongues of undone mothers Rivers, deep and green hold out wet hands and cradle the bridges that span them Cliffs that crowd the road shiver with the jade of Georgia pine As I travel across America Cities slip by terrified of their own mass feeling the asphalt of their beings being shaken to the very core These giants of America Huge mammals of commerce roar down the highways beasts of provision for every town nudging roads borders from dawn to dawn's morrow Bones made of miles and all that surrounds them Travelling across the United States fields flow by islands of corn bristling with flames of yellow fruit Sunflowers splatter the roadside screaming their codes of gold On hills cut in azure monuments against sky become one man's cattle the dark silhouettes of our fertility Moving across America flags flowing half-mast or rippling from the backs of Harleys mark the hours passing the lifting up of millions dressed and mobilized passing as they mount the hour of noon Trees gobble the spongy soil of river banks and witness the first splotch of passing the crimson of autumn played over and over again the tumbling down the startled breath the blessing of leaves on the prairie floor Quietly across America when dusk falls rain weeps gently onto goldenrod crowding the sky to be cleansed to feel the small sting of each drop gently, gently washing down daylight into the soil trenches of America Where the ghosts of silos stand in a far far place from the roadside Mist making elms into armies of undead marching the march of righteousness Storming the plains where barns stand sentinel against cottonwoods and hills are studded with huge bolts of hay Marching the march of anger wrapped within a rain cloud the frenzied beat of the thunderous heart of America And when that anger falls the tremendous call of all winds the monstrous howl of mothers feeling their sons slip away from them of fathers hearing their daughters call out before plummeting down into the dark soils of the earth That pouring down that knows no end beating on the skin of every hour on grass stalks with silver heads leaning to the ground On lakes whose flesh shimmer platinum against the rain This howl that spreads across America II After midnight onto Cheyenne the night explodes with stars the constellations of tractor trailers pulled off the highway the dizzy mix of planets peppering the sky the huge orbits of headlights tipping down the hillsides of Wyoming In Wyoming after midnight black is a texture is a scent of rivers rising is a thickness no car can penetrate punctuated by the dashes of white reflective highway threading us onward to the other side When the mists of the West sweep across the asphalt outlines and shapes become faith become prayer Only the white line can carry you forward Detached in a cloud like a dream that knows the way you move slowing onward beyond disbelief beyond the blurry numbness of fear As a thread of hope that pulls you to that which is safe which girdled by sagebrush leads you through America Dawn crawls up sand mesas of the American Great West and seeps down through juniper the color of blue stone Clouds are small lilac cheeks on the horizon like the face of a young child after a deep cry III When sun lays down its iron scoring the scrub oak of boulders each crag harboring hawks the stuffed bonnets of eagles nests where fierce fingers of millenniums have carved out cliffs to harbor hooves of antelope, moose, of wheat-colored deer This ruddiness of iron leaps up into mountains Huge fists of resolve across America Into fresh daylight I look out across damp valleys to see hills rise mystical and calm in their certainty to see streams lay gentle fingers like a woman's through the grasses To feel that I am close And beloved by this great girth of land To know that I will soon be home. |
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