Night Driving in a small town
Riding the dashboard,
watching the street lights slide up the hood
and across our silent faces,
rivulets of Coke race beyond my mouth
as the car stumbles across a pothole.
The one stoplight is always green.
It is so dark tonight, getting late,
and I should be home now
reading some novel to the sounds
of the ten o'clock news and occasional cars
on the highway.
Instead I am here, listening to our quiet words
beneath Natalie Merchant or Jewel,
asking Mariah to keep driving.
So we lap the town again and again,
feigning curiosity in shadow figures who walk alone.
It's a small town we circle,
so small I can see
the lamp lit windows
in Catie's house on Santa Fe street.
(Yeah, so I'm no Roethke and never purported to be one. I wrote this 10 years ago and am tempted to add a Mike Myers' "This poem.......sucks" ala So I Married An Axe Murderer...... :) Nonetheless, I hope you can enjoy it for its spirit and memory!)
watching the street lights slide up the hood
and across our silent faces,
rivulets of Coke race beyond my mouth
as the car stumbles across a pothole.
The one stoplight is always green.
It is so dark tonight, getting late,
and I should be home now
reading some novel to the sounds
of the ten o'clock news and occasional cars
on the highway.
Instead I am here, listening to our quiet words
beneath Natalie Merchant or Jewel,
asking Mariah to keep driving.
So we lap the town again and again,
feigning curiosity in shadow figures who walk alone.
It's a small town we circle,
so small I can see
the lamp lit windows
in Catie's house on Santa Fe street.
(Yeah, so I'm no Roethke and never purported to be one. I wrote this 10 years ago and am tempted to add a Mike Myers' "This poem.......sucks" ala So I Married An Axe Murderer...... :) Nonetheless, I hope you can enjoy it for its spirit and memory!)
posted by Lesley at 8:40 PM
8 Comments:
I did enjoy it, Lesley...you are very brave. I try not to show anyone the stuff I used to write. But that's because in MY case, all the stuff I used to write makes it obvious that at 17 I thought I knew something, and even more obvious that at 17, I knew less than nothing!
Or, at 17 you were aware of more than you realized. There is nothing wrong in idealizing that which is clearly ideal. :D
Aw, I love the poem.
Well, I think you are the only ones I would ever show the stuff I used to write. And that's because you knew me then and you remember (for better or for worse) the kinds of things/topics I wrote about. Do you all remember how fixated on words we used to get in class? I remember that certain words ALWAYS showed up in my writing just cuz I liked them. I probably still do this!! I know i do!
i love it, lesley. I can see us driving around in Mariah's old gray cougar *remember?* I wish i'd written more about things like that.
The word game... everyone remember in class... aunt janet asking us to share words that we loved. We were all so good at it. :)
I am SO fixated on word choice. I took a writing class a few years ago, and people were dissecting my story. They also fixated on a particular word, thinking it was not the right one, or inappropriate in the flow, or something else. Fools! I choose my words with obsessive-compulsive fervor, and changing it would have changed the entire feel of the story!
Yeah, and you know what I grade my students the hardest on? Word choice. That's because Janet wrote "WC" all over my papers during my sophomore year of high school. And now that's what I do because I became so picky! (I am such a geek instructor, btw, always doing this dumb joke about, no, wc is not the toilet but that's where the word you used should be. isn't that terrible! they do laugh though... probably at my geekiness. that's ok...)
Also, I remember I loved the word "crimson" when I was young -- so much nicer than "scarlet" or "red". And SOO dramatic, I thought. Then I heard that damn Evanescence song where's she's "pouring crimson regret" or some such nonsense. I laughed so hard -- why weren't they around to have me write their songs when I was 17?
oh my GOODNESS. i was SO thinking about sharing our favorite words in CW just yesterday!!! i think i still have a list of them somewhere. this is such a lovely memory!!!
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