Gary,

                        I liked the spaciousness of this poem and found it
pleasantly down to earth. However I worry about its tactile qualities. For a
poem that appears to have such a commitment to description, I found it
difficult to feel my way into the poem, that I could make the same journey
in imagination as that driver. Maybe I needed to be made to see, hear, smell
or touch more through the images. I liked the image of jackalopes being
frightened for miles around because it does conjure up a formidable presence
moving through the landscape. I can "feel" that happening. I didn't like so
much, stoplights morphing into bat's eyes. When I think of bats I think of
something frail,  with small dark eyes, relying on echolocation rather than
sight. Or did you refer to vampires in a horror film? In which case it drops
horrific associations into the poem which doesn't quite fit with what comes
before and after, with the posssible exception of a horrific accident. Or
was it a clever play on "cat's eyes" which do reflect light, in both usages?

                        On the whole I liked it.


                        Colin
                	



         From:  Gary Blankenship [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 6:45 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Revision: Wide Highways, Thin Roads
> 
> (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.... ¡Poemas sí,
> balas
> no!