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Collected Poetry

    (rd king dot net)
poetry and digital art

In California

  Possession 


When we left the interstate in Baker
to buy gas at a Shell station, incidentally
owned and operated by a man called
Failing Herron, no thoughts occurred
except for a feeling that the consequences
of my life would be splendid, often raw
with an obvious flippancy of divine
excellence, and occasionally impaired
to the point of having no consequence
in my search for a daily contentment.

It was not something to think about.  I was
more concerned with the two, weedless lots
between here and the turnoff to Death Valley,
and in trying to imagine the ambience
of that highway known as the 127.  Yet
the real issue, the pressing cause or motive,
was what we suspected we desired—that
internal allurement which would inevitably
      lead us on.

I took it for granted that we were a different
sort of pilgrim.  Obviously not Conestoga, yet
exactly what sort I took for granted
we weren't to know—surmise, maybe.
It was winter and the desert was even more
beautiful than I might have expected, seeming
confused in its own seasons.

Two hours later I was feeling more fragile
than I normally do.  Sitting in the back seat
of the patrol car, unable to realize a comfortable
      position,
I was thinking about deadlines
and the little bag of buds we got busted with.
On the outskirts of Victorville,
a river and aqueduct nearby, taunted by
the arms of Joshua trees in the landscape
we were suddenly cast as partners in crime
as if, in some way or in some place, we
had tripped that invisible line.

But I found a way, an open space—my charge
and protectorate—sentimental fool
that I am.  What kind of women could
inhabit the jails of this arid locale?
What arcane strangeness could be elemental
in all of the wrong choices that masquerades as
      their fate?
What could they do and be so deserving?
I, of course, would much rather face the men
even for a few timid hours.  Unequivocally,
separation was at hand.

So I felt the need to look at you
and caught a relaxed profile with your back
against the seat, glassy-eyed, a soft blush
of rouge defining the bone beneath your cheek.
How beautiful you were.

And the San Bernardino Mountains.


 
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