or it chases me harries me across
the plains
breaks the sky over my head,
washes out the road, drives me to
the hallway
to the safe-room in the gas station
(the world flung upon itself, rises
shrieking and blowing--the radio
says
that's about right, for this time
of year)
drops a year's worth of water on
the hallway between rooms,
lightning cracks above the
railing--
the endless rolling plains,
sheeting rains, clouds cluster
along the peaks, the freeway awash
up to the pass
(fifteen minutes behind, the shack
fragile among the green
hillsides--the coffee is free, she
gives it to me because I was
am a student--the radio buzzes
behind the counter, but she
doesn't know, and I don't, if we're
outside the path)
the city is dark, and there is not
rest, and no place to
stop--running, and my head is
buzzing, is burning
is breaking, past the turn-off--I
remember, I nearly slept
and did not sleep there--the last
time
(the trucks huddle under the neon, resting,
waiting, I
see one on the road, and it is
shuddering)
no place is safe and there is
nothing free or fine
about the road, heat burning--I am
burning
(this is detail work, this is
minute adjustment as the winds
blow the wheels--slightly--
off course, this is timing the
seconds between headlights
in the wash between the lines, this
is the wiper hum and the dance
between this stroke and that, this
buffet and that one, the wavering
wheels before me, in convoy)
wavering on the grass--
(the clouds rise and hang over the
mountains, the wash is wide
to the feet of the hills--the sage
flat, the sky cracks--columns of light
falling to the desert below--this
is a hundred miles from anywhere,
I open the window
and the wind shakes my car off course, towards the ditch)
I am falling, not rising--flattened
by the heat and the wrongness
--because it is wrong, all of it is
wrong--and there is nothing here
to see, nothing that can help
(the ditches, they say, if it comes
upon you--get down in the ditches,
it'll lift your car up and bring it
down, break you in it--get out and get down
and get down into the ditches, if
it comes upon you
the sirens blow--
and I blow through, before them)
the streets are empty and dark, but
the lights are bright--I step down from the
seat, you know this is a nice part
of town, and break towards the bushes
the cars rush through the parkway
below the trees, and gimlet,
in the spreading orange light, I
pass slowly up the street
and the mesas rise, and the pines waver--hold steady against the rough
green peaks, where the mesas meet
the pine--they rise green and gold, riddled
with layers--greenery falling
through their chasms,
a peach stand at the base of the
cliffs
the lakes deep and blue, the slope
roofed villages--and the curving mountain road
with slopes rising steep next to
it, and the wildflowers--
by the rest stop--narrow, but
smooth--and the broken pavement, the trailers
huddled where one silent freeway meets another, the souls stalking
the asphalt before the desert, who
stays here?--oh, all sorts of people--the
people who are walking
cross-country, the people who are biking
cross-county, they come here for
reunions--I stop as the first range rises, and
give half a chocolate bar to two
Irish cyclists, resting
in the view area--the light gilds
the rolling ridges, purple, gold and green--lit
from within, maybe, and the valley
blazing as the sun sets,
back that way, there is no way to compass this immensity, it is beyond
me, behind--back that way, there
are worlds upon worlds,
the city rises in haze, the morning
heavy and hot--and I have nothing, but I
make something to suit, it is
frayed and fading
by noon--I will be gone before
night falls again
