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 partsWhen 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 accidentallyVision 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, overconnectingMakes me see all small simplicitiesSignificant, substantialMakes me seek out symbolismSearch 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 senseA Pentecostal thingUnnamable and greatAn immortal unknowingSacred and ancestral and real and only felt here when the sun falls.Only felt here, now,Where the otherworldly hauntsOf coming dusk descending from immeasurable spacesTo more immeasurable spacesAn ancient, endless desert sprawl,Anarchic, forever,Interrupted only by this highway running westSome wound maybe, or a bandage,Depending on how you look at itOr maybe just what must marry the two vast expansesA mirror reflecting both sidesOr a path more than anythingBut who cares what.A bridge through the historyOf a place where a watch doesn't workA guide through wider spaces than the baggage of unclaimed except in concreteA place you might claim one day, some day,You and I, for usWhen we get to wherever it is we are going.And you speak (???) and alone,Single landmarkIn memorial now,And the landscape that always passes but never passesDoes, finally,And we see time againFor remember the mirror pointing backwardsAll 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 quietFirst 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.
