C La Dispute

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