Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 2, August 2009
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ROAD KILL POEMS
(May/June 09)
I-94 WEST
Valley City looks oh so pretty
when we arrive from the east
on the I-94. The mist rises
off the still drenched prairie.
Hugh Fraser’s soothing voice
puts you into an alpha state
from time to time. Luckily
I’m driving. He announces
“Murder,” in our mystery.
In Dickinson we find the Badland’s
Coffee Bar nicely disguised in an old church.
We sit in pews flecked with light spilling through stained glass
and study the admonition
that “unattended children will be given
an espresso and a puppy.”
The badlands are filled with such mysteries
the occasional bison protected by Theodore Roosevelt
and on the side of the road occasional carcasses of deer
protected by no one
THANK THE GODS FOR MISSOULA
The structure of a day can turn out
much like a road trip in Montana;
the hotel in Billings has a great breakfast
and you got up in plenty of time to predict
an easy ride to Spokane,WA.
A couple of hours later and after a stop
to purchase roadside earrings
the gps guides you through the clean brick of old Bozeman
to a roastery. But it’s early and lunch can wait till Butte
- this coffee is treat enough – except Butte is a dump
where lactose free cheese can’t be had for money
and an hour is wasted in a depressed mining burg
after which not even the sight of gliding hawks can lift your soul.
Thank the gods for Missoula and the Double Tree’s foresight
to put a restaurant patio right next to the swelled Clark’s Fork
where sun and salmon redeem the day before the last push
WEST OF SPOKANE
Somewhere just west of Spokane
with the sun at our backs
we are advised to please drive safely
because heaven can wait
by a truck from Batesville Casket Co.
Then we head south to Pasco
and the nuclear power station there
thinking about all the ways a person can find
trouble
so we choose our pancakes at the IHOP
for their harvest grain healthy goodness,
after which the Columbia River Gorge
recalculates our destinies
into a spectacular reprieve.
LITTLE GIRL RACING
Life seems to become most vibrant in the margins
as when I take a picture of my son going to the podium
to be hooded.
It is the boy he was riding on my shoulders I see
not the lawyer he is now.
It is his daughter having had it with sitting
now wanting to play, who carries the weight of today
not the handshake he receives from Bob Bennett
and it is my father’s unstoppable sneezing, his irritation
at its interference
that makes me proud to be part of the chain that’s led us
to this day the purpose of which years from now may be revealed
by a little girl eager to race up the stairs and out into the sun
in the parking lot.
SCENTIMENTAL
From the rose garden parking lot with Mount Hood as its backdrop
Portland looks the most privileged place on earth
even though things are a little late and none but a few
roses have sprung, the buds are poised on this Memorial Day.
Among bearers of small flags and a hippie with a recorder
all commemorating loss and the past
the six of us from other lands catch the scent
of some new awareness waiting in the wings.
ONE MORE MILE
On Wednesday evenings John Koonce and One More Mile
play the Rock Creek Tavern somewhere outside Portland
and everyone (from my two year-old granddaughter to her
eighty-one year-old great-grandfather) gets into the groove
of some old-fashioned rock and country along with a menu
of burgers and fries, salads and soups, home crafted beer and wine.
The band’s two groupies start the dancing – probably wives of members.
John Koonce, well past fifty for sure, walks like he needs knee replacements
but his guitar riffs during the instrumental opening – “Walk, don’t Run” –
fly off his strings.
There are a few what you might call mistakes of beat and phrasing in the set
but that makes the whole vibe all the more correct in this down home American joint
built in timber in 1973 by (what from the photos looks like) hippies with enough savvy
to keep it groovy now for close to forty years. Time obviously likes to replay
its best tunes in spots you’d least expect.
AT THE OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL I
After watching a performance of The Music Man
we are drawn towards a drumming circle at the Plaza
in Ashland where an organizer for the Second Chance Scholarship tells us
when we ask that a number of first nations used to traverse the Siskiyou
but that they were removed from this area. The Talcomah and the Shasta
I think he said were the most frequently resident. Removed, I thought
to make room for Shakespeare and musicals.
The Music Man enjoyed colourblind casting with white, black, Asian
as well as signing performers. But there were no American Indians
in this Iowa burg. Only the fake band created by the mayor’s wife,
an awkward recollection within earshot of the drum.
AT THE OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL II
I’ve always enjoyed reading Macbeth
but I’ve never till now seen a production I liked.
This actor, Peter Macon, performs Macbeth
like a hawk glides on an updraft.
He lets the words and his character’s will carry him
to places to the soul we’d rather not know about
but we let this actor take us there because
as Carol points out, this is, for all the blood spilt
and the corpses buried at the edge of the stage
this is a feminine interpretation.
This Lady Macbeth, played by Robin Goodrin Nordli,
is a woman seeking to become special, just a gal with a dream
not evil but misguided, who goes mad
when she realizes what she’s done – and Macbeth loves her
and himself enough to catch the updraft when it arrives.
Hawks are predators after all no matter how decorative in the sky.
These actors given air by this director, Gale Edwards, gave us cruelty
for love and now I doubt I’ll ever understand the flight
of a hawk in any other way.
CROWSNEST PASS
In a Tim’s in the Crossnest Pass
three teachers are gathered
to talk about kids – their own
and those they teach.
They talk about testosterone
while I gaze up at mountain peaks
and think about what the hell it was
apart from coal
that made this pass so important in history
something about the CPR
and the transportation of grain in the 1890s
or something about rumrunners later on
and much earlier wasn’t there something
about the Crow and the Blackfoot?
I kinda want to ask the teachers
but I get a steeped tea instead
CLOSE TO HOME
Apart from our waitress at Earl’s there’s nothing
very pretty about Regina, and she has bad breath.
Driving on the prairie requires a really good audio book
so we pick up Philip Roth’s Everyman at Chapters for the last leg.
It’s about mortality, the end of things, Death with a capital D
and it somehow suits our mood
and very importantly it fits the time of our ride.
The sex scenes are disappointingly unnecessary,
but that comes with the territory.
So we overlook them, accept them as a flat stretch of story
that we just have to get through to get to the good stuff.