Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

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Volume 10 Number 2, August 2009

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Per Brask

 

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.