from “Rain Falling on Virginia Rt. 29”

Part II
17 May, 2010

Rain and cold-front
all across Virginia.

My engine gnashes teeth
and bucks—broken motor mount.
Clutch hangs on by a thread.

Leaving Eastville just past sunrise
rain starts. Picks up across the Bay.
White-caps, degrees of gray between
waves and empty beachfront.

Patches of solid sky before
Richmond; downpour on 295.
Tall splashes when wheels
grind with pocked concrete—
the city has no funds immediately
available for repair.

Charlottesville. Light rain,
but I’m stuck in the wake of
a US Foodservice truck. The
exits approach and my stomach
is in my throat as I wonder
29 North or 29 South?

Rain in Front Royal. Later, she’ll lie down
twisting curls around a finger,
grinding at antacids until she steps out
into the night, feeling mist gathering
between her collar and the warm skin of her neck.

I watch the North exit pass with the rest of
Charlottesville. The mountains heading South
are taller, darker. The speed limit drops to 55.
Rain makes the oxidized paint
of the hood look brand new.

Back in Eastville, just off Savage Neck,
the Osprey unfolds its tailfeathers,
leans into the wind, wings spread wide
behind it. The young ones will look on
blind with delirious hope.

Tonight, I’ll fall asleep with a name
that brushes soft against my lips
until I taste what it was like:
heavy thickness, visions of the James,
of highland cowpastures—dark shoulders
and lowered heads on sloping green.

Endless green.
In the streetlight outside, rain still falls.
Car tires pass through wet streets outside.

Angels We Have Heard on High

Walked up Roanoke Mountain
to look at Turkey Vultures–
had been wondering how
the rest of the week might play out,
looking for signs wherever
they might be had.

When they’re swirling in those big
columns, drifting up and up
it means they’re gathering
momentum with the winds—getting ready
for a longer trip somewhere.

What they’re looking for, though,
is a question that doesn’t need asking.

Sourwood Mountain

I been saying strange things lately.
Talking out my ass, but it’s been
solid gold that’s been coming out
so I haven’t tried to stop it at all.
In one interview, I mentioned that
taking up cigarette smoking
has been on my list of things to do
since the day my old boss died of lung
cancer, having never smoked a day
of his life. He looked at me funny
till I said, “What I mean, sir, is that
in life, you can’t be afraid to look
for opportunity in what others think
is sour grapes.” Walked out feeling
pretty slick. Had walked in knowing
that I didn’t have the references
to land me a real job like this.

Redwing

We’re rolling along.
The sun’s out and the
roads are mostly clear.

Headed down Roanoke
mountain in the shade,
getting out every so often
to snap a picture,
or try to shove a
snowdrift.

You’ve got a tape
stuck into my old car’s
tapedeck—some guy
you met down on the
Market playing some
old timey clawhammer tunes:

This is the first day in weeks
we haven’t fought. We can
breathe a little, tell ourselves
it was cabin fever is all.

March, 2007

The moon shifts.
Its pieces rearrange
and fade into static.
Traces cling to cloud cover.

The clouds become blue-gray
in false morning light. I’m standing under
the awning of our least-favorite cafe
across the street from her apartment,
waiting on the rain.

When the rain comes,
sidewalks will empty for days on end–
in the downpour, the city
becomes mine:

I sing old songs under my breath,
watch water droplets as they divide into infinity,
and cling for a moment onto my unshaven chin.

To Steven

I wish I had your
angel with me tonight.

Blue ridges turned black,
God knows I never
called her ‘Angel’ when
I had the chance to

But Angels are the
stuff of sobering up.
I’m trying my best
these days to do it
on my own terms,

but it’s hard to focus, sometimes,
without angels–or
whatever rattles
around your skull, as
daylight fades and your
neck muscles loosen,
your eyes corkscrewing.

It’s a different kind of sleep.

-Dead Man Mountain, VA. 2007

Creekbed

I’m standing in the creekbed
looking for good skipping stones
out of habit. The backburners of my brain
are puking back up things
I never intended on thinking.

Doctor says that cognitive dysfunction like that
is called delirium until past 6 months. Then, it’s
dementia.
Price of beer’s increasing more because of the
price in hops, less because of fuel costs, the radio says.
Phineas Gage called his tamping iron
his “constant companion during
the remainder of his life.”
Law of probability means that no matter how long
a hitter’s streak, he’s just as likely to get the next one
as his batting average says he is.

Back in the day, I used to argue
with some of the neighborhood boys,
who said it was called Day Creek, when
the maps and signs said Murray Run,
plain as day. We would come here, to
this spot, because back in the day, it was
the deepest part of the creek.

The sun was always warm on our shoulders
coming through the canopy, the rocks on the bank
smooth and flat. Perfect for little flicks.

Everett in Vinton

Couple of us were sitting out
on the front porch smoking
cigarettes, watching evening
traffic thin out.

Jenny had her swollen ankle
propped up on the rail, and
I could feel the dirt from working
in the garden earlier on my shirt
as my mind touched on each of
the stray hairs she hadn’t shaved
closely around the red and purple
puffs of skin and dark bone.

Zach’s friend asked me something
and when I didn’t look at him
right away everybody saw me
staring at Jenny’s sprained ankle.

Later, when me and Jenny first
kissed, panting in humid air
Jenny asked me what had made me kiss her.

It didn’t feel like such a tale
when I told her it was her big, ugly
ankle that had gone and touched
my heart, made my blood run soft
through the crooks and turns in my
tired old heart.

Right up until the end, when
we would make love I used
to kiss that ankle, hold it
framed in the afternoon
sunlight and the chipped
paint of her windowsill.

Ophiuchus

Nights are still damn hot.
Afternoons, every biker I pass
I’m thinking is you,

changed your mind,
trying to make peace,
maybe thinking about
winter camp.

This corresponds,
no doubt, with the dreams
that keep coming
just before sunrise.
Your half-gloved hands
hanging the road bike
on the garage wall again,
the dust beneath your
fingernails, the gentle
stink of your sweat,
soaked permenantly
into those gloves.

Your mountain bike
is gathering dust,
and I run my fingers
along the thick nubs,
wishing, sometimes,

that your road bike
had tires so thick as this–
knowing, with a particular
bad taste in my mouth,
that they’ll be fine.

Nights are still warm enough
that I sit out on the rocks at
Lost Mountain Overlook from
evening to midnight

counting the stars that make
the great snake-handler in the sky.

Mountains and Rivers Without End

I drove up to the Maury with all my Lightning Hopkins
records and a case of twentypercent wine.
Stayed drunk all the time and did a lot of flyfishing. During the second
week sometime, I scrambled up the bank started shitting my guts out:

I hunched on my heels in the middle of the sun,
sweat and dry grass tickling at my asscrack, and finally said ‘okay.’
I poured out the rest of my wine and drove out to the Cowpasture.
Fishing’s better. Water’s cleaner. Good country.

When the good times dried up, I bought more wine
and drove down to where the James first crosses into Rockbridge.
From the James ended up at Lower Otter creek,
where I drank my wine, ducking federal cops and pricks in sports cars.

Followed the Roanoke River out into Montgomery County,
sat under an old brick railroad bridge at the north fork,
got drunk and watched vultures landing in the cowfields,
counted sundrops on the ridge as night came on.

Slept in my car in a long field along the Little River up in Floyd.
Got it in my head that I’d see the fog on Mt. Rogers one more time—

Got a notion to drive my car into the New River, but I sobered up and made
it into Grayson county. Found my way up to the stone shelter on Mt. Rogers.
Sat in the wet grass by the spring sipping at water cupped in my hands,
trying to forget the names of bacteria you hear of. Nasty five syllable words.

I fell asleep praying out loud it wouldn’t storm and singing
“I’m gonna get me a Mojo Hand” by the warm ashes of my fire.