The Situation Surrounding You

 

II. The Situation Surrounding You

       “We are leaping into a future that will go one way or the other.”

             Jane Hirshfield

     

       “The mind is trying to discover and to find its place within the land, to discover a way to dispel its           own sense of estrangement.’

                Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

Night driving with the new maps

is no help, it’s still dark in the car

and these voices come at me like deer.

Karen in her fabric room

preparing material

weaving into landscapes

of thread memory,

me driving away

searching river restoration reach.

Mirages can be described,

and memory? Mine, as a child

in North Dakota winters

from the back seat,

returning from Flaxton

to Bowbells. Jack Rabbits

in dim headlights, my Mother’s

voice in swirling snow

on the highway.

We were closer to Canada

than anywhere in the States.

Slow down and then

The Northern Lights

whiteout winds

and Lon Haley,

a child’s first barber,

drunk, head on into the semi

coming from Minot.

Lens, corrected

and empty space

among rays of light

the child’s eyes magnified.

Our school called us Eskimos.

Mirages are distortions

but the child-mind drives

the car’s heater loud

but there’s no warm air

getting to the back seat

where there’s ice

on the windows.

The mirage can be dis-proven

while the memory

must be lived out.

This, too, is Arctic dreaming.

III. This Driving in the Dark. Driving Over McKenzie Pass

The night before the day on the McKenzie River with river restoration people.

First Fridays at Finn Rock.

Last week at a celebration

a man facing me, recalls another man,

You’re like him, he says,

and I nod, going along

for a time, before saying,

But I’m darker, than he is,

and he nods. I’m asking

for something I want him

to recognize, something

like weight, something

there is in me making

this drive around these mountains

this wilderness where snow

closed the byway last week.

I don’t know enough when I walk.

I never do.

Acuity for what comes up

arrives in the personal, in dreaming,

and I’m so dumb in the landscape.

Ears better than my eyes.

This knowing gives me awkward comfort.

What I know this morning

is far less than what I imagine.

I’m trying and make out

animals on the highway

Moments on the River

In waders, trying to remain standing

while listening and taking notes.