C

Scene from a highway in the desert, 1989, first draft

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 in 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 effects, makes me mark things needlessly
The immensity of breath is all, I guess
Overamplifying, overconnecting
Makes me see all small simplicities
Significant, substantial
Makes me seek out symbolism
Search in the symmetry for some lost stigmas of the self
These words that hiss or makes snake sounds
But it feels holy almost, though I don't 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 Pentecostal thing
Unnamable and great
An immortal unknowing
Sacred and ancestral and real and only felt here when the sun falls

Only felt here, now
Where the otherworldly haunts
Of coming dusk descending from immeasurable spaces
To more immeasurable spaces
An ancient, endless desert sprawl
Anarchic, forever
Interrupted only by this highway running west
Some wound maybe, or a bandage
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 doesn't work
A guide through wider spaces than the baggage of unclaimed except in concrete
A place you might claim one day, some day
You and I, for us
When we get to wherever it is we are going
And you speak [?] and alone
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 a 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 to come sang quiet
First and then just [?]
So I crack my window just so
Almost close my eyes and almost let go of the steering wheel, but don't

It feels impossible for me to crash the car when we are in it