- Driving, and: Dust Devil, and: Off Balance, and: Lost in Thought on an Extension Ladder
Driving
You were behind the wheelof the used family car at night with no license, no key. It turned onall by itself. You could seethrough the dusty windshield, not the garage wall, but the road aheadrunning under. It was yours.It wasn't yours. You knew where both your feet should go and when to lift them and why,what never never to changetill exactly the right time as you picked up speed, but not where you were goingexcept when you had to shutthe driver's door behind you, tiptoe up the stairs and climb back into bed. [End Page 139]
Dust Devil
Through stubble the color of dust, the dust devil spins down the sloping furrows, the only cloud at this day's end gone furious under the sky and on earth in a coil toward me, snarled tight at the churning base, one streamer flung up and around and lost and left with a hunch and hump sideslipping to tanglefoot past me full of itself and tall as a house with nothing and no one home long enough to matter in its hurry to be done with it, to outrace what it lifts, swivels, and tosses to earth to settle for less and less, now even less.
Off Balance
Something in your head is telling youyou're out from under the place where what's left in there thought it wasand thought it was going, somewhereyou hadn't planned on exactly, and at that moment you realize you must change [End Page 140] the whole idea of directionif you want to be anywhere sooner, not later, and must turn and not swivel too fartoward this surprising goal you hadn't had in mind and hadn't considered choosing,and must keep at least one footfrom losing a track or a trace of where the other is without thinking about itin advance. Then in the steadilyunsteady abrupt resumption of more or less forward progress, all that's required of youbesides your single-mindedversion of locomotion is a serene look, not at your toes or heels(though one of them may feelas light as if it had wings and the other seems abstract), but at what lies aheadwhere the way is paved for youwith something like good intentions, something stony, floor-like, earthy or concrete,and now undeniably,unavoidably underfoot. [End Page 141]
Lost in Thought on an Extension Ladder
It isn't a good place to forget whyyou wanted to climb this high in the first place,making yourself scarce on solid ground.Was it new lights or clearing what isn't goingdown a downspout into the old cycle?
You can feel (as firm as any step on a stair)the rungs under your arches. You're not afraidthey're suddenly going to break or disappearand leave you to the mercy of your gripon the side rails, sending you back where you came from.You believe the ladder can hold its own. You believeeach rung knows where it is, that none of themis a point of no return, that each is at leastas immediately dependable as the last.
But you're backing down now with no loss of staturein your own shaky opinion. You're playing it safe.You never wanted to be one of Jacob's angels.You'll settle for less by going back to the garden. [End Page 142]
David Wagoner has published eighteen books of poems, most recently A Map of the Night (U of Illinois P) and ten novels, one of which, The Escape Artist, was made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola. He won the Lilly Prize in 1991 and has won six yearly prizes from Poetry. He was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets for twenty-three years. He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and twice for the National Book Award. He edited Poetry Northwest from 1966 to...