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a poem by Frank Reardon
Surviving Route 83
The mists of memory,
Cold and damp--
Move like violent blowing snow
Mid-December across a North Dakota highway.
Long, long straight back of a Dark and Leathery snake,
Hard top tragedy kept in tip top shapes.
Swaying winter in white oceanic movement,
Each front tire capturing the go ahead round--
Second after second,
Lunatic memorabilia!
Big-hulking scrap pieces of tangled metal and rubber
Lining the belly of Route 83,
A thought once as if thought never was,
Contacted in the fragile meaning of blood dripping forcefully.
Meat frozen in specks of dark-black and blue frozen skin
A man of the white pale ruffling the new colors
Strutting around with his new tail feathers,
That of the peacock color
A trance and helpless dance,
Wife never made it after the first roll over...
Head bobs and shrieks in frost bite crystallization
Smooth steps of the watery-baited surfer,
All around the explosions of memory--
Fires flowing deeply into the snowy air,
Confused by the mixture of ash and the drift.
Ever see the fires of hemoglobin burn in a midnight blizzard?
The picture frame of what has come to be
Like a harsh and pale light in one spot of the ground,
Holding the lives of what was willing.
As if memory was
And is like what is to be,
The common destruction of allegory...
Like us,
we keep on passing through the drifts
Scene after scene
Desensitized by its meaning,
The dead white over their eyes.
Cold and damp--
Move like violent blowing snow
Mid-December across a North Dakota highway.
Hard top tragedy kept in tip top shapes.
Swaying winter in white oceanic movement,
Each front tire capturing the go ahead round--
Second after second,
Lunatic memorabilia!
Lining the belly of Route 83,
A thought once as if thought never was,
Contacted in the fragile meaning of blood dripping forcefully.
A man of the white pale ruffling the new colors
Strutting around with his new tail feathers,
That of the peacock color
A trance and helpless dance,
Wife never made it after the first roll over...
Smooth steps of the watery-baited surfer,
All around the explosions of memory--
Fires flowing deeply into the snowy air,
Confused by the mixture of ash and the drift.
The picture frame of what has come to be
Like a harsh and pale light in one spot of the ground,
Holding the lives of what was willing.
And is like what is to be,
The common destruction of allegory...
Like us,
we keep on passing through the drifts
Scene after scene
Desensitized by its meaning,
The dead white over their eyes.