La Meta

The Gulf? Oh, well, the smell of that expanse of water ... the warmth of it, its salinity, the lay of the light from December skies intense yet waning. It's hard to describe, the distances benign.

I fear I am of the wrong latitude. A certain listlessness might overtake me if I were to linger on that scene.


the Christmas catch,
dumped on the deck to flop and kick,
they writhe in this heat

give or take

There are no trees, almost, no high points, just prairie, rolling and bending through time refracted in infinite distance. Another 1000 feet in altitude and you'd be lightheaded from just a peek at it. The mountains are only a day away, give or take, a white-knuckled, non-stop pedal to the metal drive. Journeys are an assault, not only a ride. There's no other way for it.

It's the sky that pulls you in, its immediacy and its size. And with the night, the prairie becomes an ocean, phosphorescence in the dew on the grain, to float suspended above the Earth, a trick of the light moving faster than safety allows. Until you realize, on such a scale, you're not moving at all. Times like those, you're tempted to just let go of the wheel.



that big rock
highest point around --
no cell signal again