quinta-feira, dezembro 14, 2006

Few and Far Between



If only we could forgive ourselves, and didn’t
have to have somebody else forgive us—

Where I came from everybody could see anyone coming,
Even storms: and out there the etiquette

was not to say right off what you came for when you did
or ask anybody why, if they come where you wer

in all space, and time; it made for a kind
of trust, or—well, it was like trust.

I remember some of those storms, how the dust
would kick up before them in the wild wind, and behind it

the blueblack cloud piled high white on top
with lighting flaring inside, and maybe only a few miles
wide,

coming over the desert sort of slow and grand:
you could got out of the way if you wanted to

but nobody did; as I said, seldom enough is welcome.
Didn’t I say that? One night when mother was away

my dad and I followed a storm clear down
to Needles in the state car, His job

Was to take care of the highway, so it was work, sort of,
for us to ride along behind that cloud we see by its
own light

through the wild fragrance the desert has after a rain
in the lone car on the road that night, to keep track

of the damage it did. He showed me a place near Essex
where a flash flodd had ripped out three hundred feet of
roadbed

two years before, where it hadn’t rained
in fifty years before that. The foreman said so,

Billy Nielson, and he’d been out there fifty years
without seeing the ground wet .
My dad and I stopped on the grade below Goffs
and watched the storm go on out of his territory

across the river into Arizona
where the sky was getting gray,

and turned for home as the sun rose behind us
back across the clean desert in slant light

that lit the smoke trees in washes that were churned
smooth
where the water went, and sharpened along the edges
through Essex and Cadiz Summit, great tamarisked
Chambless
Ludlow for breakfast with the humorous Chinaman, Lee,

Newberry Springs, Daggett and Elephant Butte, Nebo
Hidden by wire,
On home over the hill to Barstow on the good road.



somebody gave me a copy of this amazing poem, but i do not know who the author is. if you know, please tell me--if not, im glad you got to read it.

1 Comments:

Blogger Trey said...

check out the photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonite/

9:03 AM  

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