I.

We drove the old Studebaker,
a rusting sky  blue, hard through
the ripe and shimmering
Montana wheatfield,
across the endless acres,
stalks golden almost to translucence
against the thick blue sky.

We didn’t see the riverbed and crashed
headlong into the shallow current.
We stalled out and spilled
onto the smooth, cool stones
and let the water flow around us
as we laughed, and then all turned silent.

The smell of clover pollen and
the river’s glacial silt, heat from my
head across your chest, the chill
of the river rocks, the rough dust
of wheat chaff on the skin,
a staggering haze of sunlight.
Fresh and unfocused, but powerful -
overpowering.
The daydream of life swallowed us whole.

II.

Soon we started up the car again
and raced up the bank and back
home, the wheat purple and
orange in the twilight.

In the darkness then we watched
with horror, my fingers running
the rough strands of your long dark hair,
as your dad tended to the tractor engine.
Fall was coming, and in it that ancient
bit of wild knowledge,
which we often forget,
that all things must fade away at last.

Weary child,
sleep tonight in the thick
nest of freezing March
one last time,

and I promise
tomorrow you will wake
to a morning of gold,
the bedroom shining
like a Byzantine palace
direct from Yeats’ fevered dreams,

the east window a prism
for the flood of dawn’s
achingly beautiful light,
warm, iridescent, and
doused with springtime.

It’s not much, but it’s a little something.

Endless train on the rails.
The heartbeat singing cla-shunk cla-shunk,
cla-shunk cla-shunk
across the shifting prairie,
down the pass and into the outstretched West
north of Laramie.

My mind goes out of focus,
the daydream meets the world.
The beat of the collar against my neck
in the merciless wind,
the forever prairie, the infinite cla-shunk,
the towering sky,
incomprehensible.

I bet there are places where the endless ends
and things even god doesn’t know
when he stands and looks from the side of the road
at the same cold vastness.

I feel helpless, and so small.
I wonder if he ever feels the same.

This
is the place
we’re all looking for
the place
where nothing happens.

The quiet sky, the quiet sky,

the waft of oil and burning wood,
the clack of a shutter in the breeze,
a willowy rustle, wind in the pines.

Neighbors shouting down the valley
and laughing their way home
the freedom of a foreign language
spoken all around you.

The hard and beautiful smell of
that first pulled shot of espresso.

The day slipping by, sliding down
like a sweet cool drink with Anna at the cafe.

This is the place
we’re all looking for
that place where words begin
and life falls to the page
like the Italian sunshine

This is the place
where everything happens.

* * *

Originally posed on Northography last year.

In the morning, the time of hope,
the sky will be blue like fresh steel,
or woolen grey,

it might rain, or it might be hot
like always, or you might see your
footprints in the frost. The sky, the world, won’t care,
and the sky, the world, won’t know.

The world. It needs help sometimes.
A push, a kickstart, a breath, from you.
So breathe. Be life.

In the evening, before the night,
after the work of the day is done -

the sky will be blue like fresh steel,
or woolen grey,

and you might be confused
because it will look like dawn again.