People keep telling me to do this though I hate the idea. I am going to try to write daily for a month and then abandon ship. I don't know what to say. Here's my latest poem. I wish I was a poet...
Driftwood, Texas 12/14/10
Last week I woke up at 3am feeling sick, horrible,
and ran outside to call for help.
I had an oven leaking gas and carbon monoxide, the gas smell saved me,
but I do think of how easy it could have been without gas,
falling asleep and just sleeping. Sleeping in my car until 5am waiting for help,
when I could have thought "stomach virus" and rolled over and be smiling down today.
The sadly not-cute firemen banging on the car windows.
This week I am a roadtripper, zooming through the Texas Hill Country smelling
air, which we do not have in Houston, and flying up and down hills, taking
the curves like Nascar practice. (Eggshells on my pedals.)
This week I take a wrong turn on Old RR12 and stop for directions at a country store, a few
minutes that changed it all again. A few minutes later, pointed in the right direction,
I witness an accident like nothing I have seen, so many cars, the bodies in the road,
sirens, blocked, frozen, stuck on a 2 lane country road, looking, not looking, the man on the asphalt.
At these speeds the metal peels onto the asphalt as easily as a skinned knee, but the sound...
The worst has happened to someone, again not me, by a few minutes.
I curve into a ditch to make way for help, any kind of help. So many lights.
The traffic piles up, the men in work vans, the locals, they turn and herd the tourists from the closed road
to a gas station, where we listen to talk of Lone Man's Bluff, Eagle Pass, country roads, detours,
a blur of lost. We follow them until we lose a few people and then pull over at the next
station, waiting, where the workmen with radios, the locals, are whispering words like "fatality" and "amputation".
They know now, exactly, while roadtrippers in our city cars are left with flashes of imagined horror.
Looking and not looking are the same, our minds invent the looking.
The only workman going my way draws a map and I speed off to Driftwood behind him,
trusting he doesn't look like a serial killer, though they say third time's a charm.
His work van takes the tiny roads, the snaky curves, the hills with no visibility - easily - at 80,
while my little VW Jetta skids in gravel at 60, focus, straight line car, city car, 90 angle turns on green
are not planned and I need you.
We speed off of Highway 150 to FM 1826 as if I have ever heard of you,
and suddenly I am blessed with fall. Fall, Texas, 70 F, breezy, a few night freezes already
but this is how we do it here. Flashes of childhood trip to Vermont? There are trees
of defiance, of attitude, trees drooping red and deep yellow leaves, clinging
to their leaves with protest, I will have my fall, I want to be beautiful before I die.
Surely more people will drive by before the next freeze, you can feel them dreaming.
We all long to serve some purpose.
I roll windows, flip for perfect music of ecstasy, superstitious about continuing blessings,
the van flies 90 and more and my hands have relaxed,
I am rewarded for my music and singing with constant bursts of red, yellow, trees that
do not want to, as I do not want to,
I am blessed and I cannot remember any other beauty except the present that is here.
As I sing for Turandot to reconsider, so much fear, you won't be young forever,
Princess, don't do it, you'll end up like me,
I am thoughtfully warned by the Texas Department of Transportation of a
NARROW COUNTRY BRIDGE
but I can't slow down now, don't do it, and a huge stand of trees with pink leaves appears on either side
of the bridge, a covered bridge thank you to the pink leaves that also want their Fall, December, Texas.
They hug the bridge and leave me staring in the rearview,
I get where I am going, somehow, 2 1/2 hours late. Somewhere else the phone rings.
Your father isn't coming home tonight. Come to the hospital we have to talk to you about your child.
All this talk of carbon monoxide, surely the technician shut off the valve? Can't I take this ugliness,
a loner, bear it for someone who will be missed? Did he forget?
On my way back the spot on the asphalt is black and clear as glowing light, this is where it happened and cannot
be erased. I want to take a picture but decide it is disrespectful.
Now back in Houston in my Montrose, my graffiti, my street art and homelessness and shotgun houses
waiting to be demolished for expensive 3 story townhomes for people who will not like Montrose, I see beauty.
Ugly, but the beauty I was born and raised with, the beauty where I live and belong. The filthy streets
and McCormick pint bottles in the parking lot, the men begging under the bridge the grandfatherly one I buy dog food for…
GIVE UP has put up new art, always makes me smile...
Dear God, you know how tired I am. Please stop teasing me. The trees wait sadly for it to
freeze in a few nights, clinging to every color, clinging in absolute rebellion, Texas, December,
a perfect breezy 70. I am not afraid. I want to be beautiful before I die.
