Thursday, August 29, 2013

Everything that would place itself so

 photo Sojournal1.jpg

Sojournal

We might drive out into the country, barns
and farms skimming along our sides like rain,
trees erupting and quelling in soft green plosives
as we branch and talk in matters known and not,
driving, you and I, slipping meadow by meadow,
curves tracing contour determined by land, row
after row, the quiescence spooning through the
windshield, livestock dotting the dry hills between
live oaks seized by poses they keep without flinching,
skystrike and thunder, the seasons harden everything
that would place itself so before such reckoning.

Deeper into travel we might go, the journey of
no consequence, where is here to there, and there
is here again. Lines on the road draw us like painted
breadcrumbs, the real story stained in faded asphalt
that leave the roadway and disappear like everything.
Speed limits slip ahead into the future, we might turn
to say at the same time, the chances of that as possible
as angels strafing happiness overhead. Foothills flecked
with ranchos and summer villas, courtyard gates blued
and greened in weathered patinas that throw back their
heavy locks into the lancing of our fleeting eyes.

But all this has yet to happen. We are still weeks away
from arriving at the leaving for it all, the small epoch
tucked safely away in calendars we’ve yet to turn and
smooth with our hands as if the endless were navigable,
as if the days were promised and held for our passing like
a dinner invitation just down the street past the chained
dog we always recoil from not trusting the surety of iron,
the snap always clanging in the bells of our bones, the
sharp clatter of covered dishes nearly always falling onto
the sidewalk before we’ve gone four houses from home.
We might drive into the country, then again, maybe not.

Joseph Gallo
June 17, 2013

 photo Sojournal2.jpg

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