Hi Gary
I've said this a few times tonight: "It seems a tad long..." But not too
much too long. The 3 lines about the night fog... (perhaps don't say as much
as all the other anecdotes/images slotted into the narrative).
The last line, tho, took me by totally by surprise! I feel I want her to be
as alive as the stories I've heard. I don't want to feel sad at the end. I
want to feel that her style of life goes on...
Bob
>From: Gary Blankenship <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Revision: Wide Highways, Thin Roads
>Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 10:45:12 -0800
>
>(I sent the wrong version. Growl.)
>
>Wide Highways, Thin Roads
>
>She drove her eighteen-wheeler
>across the Great Basin,
>"Earl" and "Bertha" so loud jackalopes
>frightened for miles around.
>The load - straight-to-breakage toys,
>pirated music and videos
>destined for the discount bin,
>paperbacks due to be remanded
>before she returned to Frisco's docks.
>
>coast to coast
>she pushed more than most
>sometimes lost
>
>A wrong turn on KC's beltway,
>past oak-lined streets,
>manicured lawns,
>and three story antebellum columns.
>A green rubber ball bounces into the avenue.
>
>Night fog so thick on the Bay bridge,
>stoplights morphed into bat's eyes,
>a twenty-three car pile-up left behind.
>
>An April white-out south of Clarkesburg,
>ice and wind from Stonecoal Lake
>rising to grab the wheels and turn the windshield
>into a polar ice cap without bears.
>
>Gully washer on the Platte,
>drive-by in Susanville,
>speed trap where brothers once died,
>each for their own vision of freedom.
>
>harbor bound
>she sped the ground
>sometimes found
>
>Carols on the radio as she ran top speed
>to drop her load before first light on Christmas day,
>a cup of coffee from a stranger
>when she staggered into the truck stop
>with a two tire blow-out,
>the smile of a family of migrants
>when she let them hitch in a record Kansas sun,
>the desert after a late spring rain.
>
>A clapboard bar outside Fort Collins -
>greasy fries and congealed omelet,
>age and too many wide highways
>left their tracks across her face
>until he smiled from his scruffy boots
>to sweat-stained Stetson,
>the trail of too many hard rodeo landings
>and sleepless nights in pickup beds across his.
>
>running East or West
>she was among the best
>until she found rest
>
>along side a cabin near Homer.
>Her last trip up the thin road to Alaska
>before her old bones betrayed her,
>Hank loud enough to scare
>the grizzlies for miles around,
>a feather bed and scruffy boots to assure
>it didn't get too fluffy,
>paperbacks with their front cover gone.
>
>a gear shift her headstone
>
>
>Dec Byron Sacre at: http://gardawg.homestead.com/gardawg.html... Writer's
>Hood at http://www.writershood.com/... Poets for Peace.... ˇPoemas sí,
>balas
>no!
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