The Narrative Image

A thin, icy, cloud painted crystals overnight onto chilly windshields Till the morning’s faux summer-sun chased it into low places Winter’s premature apparition melts in gullies, carved across sloping fields Behold a golden diamond set in a blue dome of sky, quiet and still as if in permanent stasis Until Winter’s specter fingers stretch forth, over brittle, golden-fields shivering Birds bail out of the sky, as if some great dangerous tide is turning I stand atop a deep cut scar, a canyon, a river’s ceaseless dithering Gusting winds kick up a haze though no fire is left burning This bird’s eye view reveals my path through history, those days of triple digits The river, flashing cold blue grins, teases saying, “I still got your (pretty-good) fishing pole” It seems unlikely that a river’s fits and starts, its endless fidgets Would craft such nonsensical wondrous scenes — absent any goal ...

A plaintive yodel emerges from static on the radio as my car crests another hill. I think it could be Hank Williams and marvel that a human voice in a scratchy recording can cross time, defy death, and thereby interact with the living. I snatch snippets of song from the static like moments of sunlight streaming through the dappled shade of an immense oak. The road descends into a valley and the static roars and the strident condemnation of some holy faker (adopting the cadences of a Martin Luther King speech) overwhelms simple beauty with bankrupt religiosity (apparently content doesn’t matter as long as it’s punctuated with plenty of ‘Jesuses). I punch the console and switch to one of only two CDs I find in the newspaper, maps and camping miscellaneously slowly growing in the unoccupied passenger seat. Regina Spektor sings: “He stumbled into faith and thought, ‘God, this is all there is?’” This lyric out of context launches a cascade of fledgling responses. He stumbled into ...