Tritone Life

The roads of Illinois are like the lines on Kathy’s apron,

straight but for gentle swells of land,

burnt like seared iron edges into the thicker fabric

of green forests and bending corn fields

all heavy in the heat.

Kathy works what she has worked,

rolling and cutting her world to existence.

The stove’s continual heat keeps sweat on her cheek

that bonds the straying strands of fading dust brown hair to skin.

Sometimes she thinks the porch relief

and steps out to between the sheet of land and blanket of sky.

She toys with the hem of her apron,

but swears the roads she sees are so long

they can bear you forever.

Most nights I drink at Charlie’s.

He sits at the bar, and don’t think I haven’t seen him.

His reflection behind the bottles stares out at him.

At first he tried to look away, but it followed him like a gossip.

Now he listens with elbows on the grimy wood

and earth blackened hand holding up his tired forehead.

One night I was drunk enough to care

and heard it ask him about the fields,

the crop, the hell of not making it

again and again.

I swayed standing and wanted to tell him

his wife comes out on the porch and watches for a chance to leave.

I could see myself on that stool living the life of worn out jeans and dirty flannel.

God help me.

In Illinois the wind rides up the bellies of thunder clouds,

pushes through trees and shakes them into frenzied life.

It’s all fury and strain until the thunder comes and shatters into rain.

The struggles fades and the summer smothers everything.

I can only chose what I’m given.

Anything can fill me up, blow right through me and leave me vacant again.

The porch is empty.

I don’t see him at Charlie’s anymore,

and some nights I pray they’re gone as far west as the coast.

God help my beggar soul if Kathy ever looked into the field

and saw me watching, hands buried in the dirt, waiting.

It never comes like they say it does,

never sweet, never tender,

never cold, never dramatic;

like a Freudian, like a dragon,

like a light, like a ghost

or any other symbol

on the list of bad explanations;

never like anything you want,

never like a dream of soft flesh and never endings,

never like the conscious slips we make

after we’ve determined how we live;

never hard, never easy,

never clear, never muddy;

never any one thing we can say,

but always many things we can’t.

Clear day, mid-winter.

Cold wind blew up the ridge.

Hands in pockets,

I stared down at burnt ground.

It never comes like they say it does.

During the spring, the hills had flowered and turned green.

But when they came down from the north

through the pass in the mountains,

the hills had lost their life to brown waves of heat.

The barren valley stretched long under the hot wind.

She sat on the couch, small,

alone in the vacant room,

gazed at displaced objects

sitting like buds in crumpled flowerings of newspaper.

An empty picture frame,

a box still wrapped in blue and pink,

sympathy cards stared from among the scattered items.

Bare walls held no imagination

and objects no motivation.

When I come in

She has given up the couch

for a paper fan and a rocking chair by the window,

hand resting hollow on her stomach.

The dusty street runs through skeleton houses

constructed on untillable fields.

She gazes between street lights rising before their need

to beyond the hills.

Thunder clouds are forming over the mountains.

The folded napkin is exquisite over the saucer

with a corner of green counter top distorted through the glass.

The cup is half, and steam still rises above paper and envelope.

The words in ink move, elaborate

and state intention quite beyond

any corpse of thought.

The envelope has a stamp,

and on the stamp, a still life.

Two pears, one superimposed over the other.

In the cafe

conversations familiar from the centuries are told quickly.

An empty paper cup blows past.

Feet from somewhere scurry to catch it.

On the table of a night and morning life

is a summer’s collection of unopened mail,

unmailed openings, glasses that held liquor

and mugs that held coffee.

What is seen beyond this half-reflection in the window?

Movements of flesh, business suits and cigarettes.

But the seated mind returns to the reflection.

We never rode them,

delicate machines that first tied the world

round with iron string and set life speeding

to its fever pace;

nor the cruel beasts

pulling loads through mountains unwilling

of tunnels blasted and long

where the beasts carried crews to suffocate;

nor the dining cars,

elegant to eat off china unique to the line

and search final shapes of a twilight world pass to night

and be forgotten under strength of electric light;

nor the box cars

that bore the dreams of harder men

from dust and famine to the farms of California,

men who never once gave to anger without they first

embittered the bed from which it rose.

No,

when we went it was Amtrak 3 AM

waiting while the town slept as if deserted,

and Billy stumbled from his truck when the train came,

having stoned his senses for the ride,

and rode the observation car, red eyes glazed at the dawning world,

and spoke of how stupid are sheep;

and Amber came on down the line

crying out of her boy friend into my friend

under the gentle mockery of the conductor;

and night again in the dining car,

hard plastic booths round cheap laminate tables

where Bob-with-hair-like-this played cards,

gave us tips on roller derby

and told us of the time he gave the finger to the devil;

and the long hours in airline seats

breathing recycled air in the dead of night,

wondering when our stop would come, or dawn,

and an unstudied for test in History on Monday

and wishing I could care at least about that

but only thinking to myself:

Matt has his license,

why didn’t we just drive?

This blog needs some poetry, which I am not competent to provide. Happily my brother is a fine poet, and has agreed to let me post his new series. Here is the first.

“Everything I Need Is East of Here”

By Christopher Raley

The west is rich with golden dreams shining in our eyes,

and owners of our sight hang their houses out on cliffs

while waves continually blow and breathe

to crumble sand-stone and mix it red in rip tides.

I don’t need a house in a setting world or a screen,

flat essence, strong skin or frail bone.

I know a land where thunderheads stack into the blue

and charge you down like wrath over the lake.

You lock fear at the oars and when the planks start to snap

you know everything you need is where the sun rises

and the desert waits to bloom.