Road Trip
Kurt Brown
The new road runs along the old road. I can see it
still imprinted on the earth, not twenty feet away
as I drive west past silos and farmsteads, fruit stands and hogs.
Once in Kansas, I stood in a field and watched
the stars on the horizon revolve around my ankles.
People are always moving, even those standing still
because the world keeps changing around them, changing them.
When will the cities meet? When will they spread until
there is a single city—avenue to avenue, coast to coast?
What we call “the country” is an undeveloped area
by the side of the road. There is no “country,” there is no “road.”
It’s one big National Park, no longer the wilderness it was.
But the old world exists under the present world
the way an original painting exists under a newer one.
The animals know: their ancient, invisible trails cross
and re-cross our own like scars that have healed long ago.
Their country is not our country but another place altogether.
Anything of importance there comes out of the sky.
In Amarillo the wind tries to erase everything, even the future.
It swoops down to scrape the desert clean as a scapula.
Here among bones and bleached arroyos the sun leans
through my window at dawn to let me know
I’m not going anywhere. There’s no more anywhere to go.
--
I don't know how my boyfriend will feel about me publicly sharing what he responded with when I sent this poem to him via e-mail, but he hit the nail right on the hammer when he replied:
It reminds me a bit of that little blurb that we appreciated yesterday at the Rivera exhibit. The one about there no longer being an external frontier to withdraw to and instead one must move inward into one's self. Or at least the very last sentence of this poem hints at this. Do you think there's some melancholy in this poem? I'm not certain, but in any event is certainly pretty. Thanks for sharing love.
