IWNHM/IWNHO: Road Songs
With my family, I drove back and forth across the country, almost since birth. I miss that America of then. It was wilder, more uncertain, disconnected, weirder. Each stop on the road had its own flavor. I get out on the road as often as I can, although time is more dear now. There are no more family sing-alongs; I sing to myself and get lost on backroads. What I’m looking for gets harder to find each year. I suspect that it’s not so different as it has always been; just me who has changed.
The air is made heavy with god,
the air is given a tongue and throat
settling on the butcher and the iron seller,
the tanner and thief stop and hear,
love beside you, like pieces of yourself
a song of honey, pain in the leafing,
how bare the night and desert
how rich the day and breath
long threads of word and echo and word;
come see god in the world and the red dust…
[from Prayer is Better Than Sleep]
I go further now, trying to find something of that roughness or smallness or strangeness or oldness in the world.
The road is holy, like dancing, like water.
Warm Springs
The mesas, shadows
on each shoulder
golden sunrise grass
grows to meet me
and a black dog waits
at the side of the road
it’s important that he is alive
at least his tail is wagging
while I sit alone in the car
trying to not run off the road
looking at the trees
like they are objects of desire
the ground here used to be
covered with frost
now it is golden grass
uneven and untidy
it’s important that Kurt Cobain
is singing to me
o god
he was only twenty-seven
like a crow begging me
it helps to know
there are not just guns
but honey in the world.
