Whoever chooses the placement
Of roadside picnic tables and pullouts
Lives in a world of decisions I don't understand.
Wherever the views are most breathtaking
Or the bend in the ponderosas most peaceful
There is no shoulder to lean on, nothing
But sudden drops that make me slow down
Of roadside picnic tables and pullouts
Lives in a world of decisions I don't understand.
Wherever the views are most breathtaking
Or the bend in the ponderosas most peaceful
There is no shoulder to lean on, nothing
But sudden drops that make me slow down
And catch my breath. But where the view's obscured
And there's maybe an idle backhoe,
Where the weary traveler who sits must watch
Each touring motorbike pass within arm's reach,
Where tattered surveyor flags dot the bald pine straw
Like the remnants of some Borgesian map,
There waits the picnic table and the place to park.
I suspect some trick of the crossroads lurks.
What better trick than to keep the crossroads disguised?
It looks like there's nothing happening here,
Nothing but a pause in the homeliest part of the park,
This happenstance pocket along
The line of the wandering road, approved for a pause.
The edges elsewhere make for more obvious temptations,
A plunge to the floor of the canyon
From this or that cliff's pouting, overhung basalt lip.
There are intersections and trailheads everywhere
Except for here, this whatever-the-hell
Of a place to wait for a messenger
Who'll never appear to bargain decided fate.
I can hear grasshopper wings,
When there are no motors bypassing me.
I can hear flies buzz and little birds quarreling,
The wind making its way through the range.
I can feel the hot sun on my sagging back
And taste the reflexive panic in my mouth
Each time I think of those sheer edges that tempt me
And there's maybe an idle backhoe,
Where the weary traveler who sits must watch
Each touring motorbike pass within arm's reach,
Where tattered surveyor flags dot the bald pine straw
Like the remnants of some Borgesian map,
There waits the picnic table and the place to park.
I suspect some trick of the crossroads lurks.
What better trick than to keep the crossroads disguised?
It looks like there's nothing happening here,
Nothing but a pause in the homeliest part of the park,
This happenstance pocket along
The line of the wandering road, approved for a pause.
The edges elsewhere make for more obvious temptations,
A plunge to the floor of the canyon
From this or that cliff's pouting, overhung basalt lip.
There are intersections and trailheads everywhere
Except for here, this whatever-the-hell
Of a place to wait for a messenger
Who'll never appear to bargain decided fate.
I can hear grasshopper wings,
When there are no motors bypassing me.
I can hear flies buzz and little birds quarreling,
The wind making its way through the range.
I can feel the hot sun on my sagging back
And taste the reflexive panic in my mouth
Each time I think of those sheer edges that tempt me
To fly down to death in an instantaneous
Agony of adrenaline and regretAnd instantaneous blackout of permanent forget.
I don't need a god to tell me what I am,
Even if I depend on anonymous park rangers
To tell me where I'm allowed to relax.
I'm the true accident where intentions overlap;
I'm the crossroads where "a mutation
Meets its context," and I mean that
As close to literally as such a weird
Amalgamation of abstractions
And fused metaphors can be made.
I myself am the crossroads and the god
Contained in this inelegant roadside bend
Where no one would suspect temptation
For anything worse than a picnic lunch
And a covert pee behind a gnarly-barked tree trunk.
I'm not that in the dark about how this world works,
But I don't fit it, I don't, and I don't comprehend it,
And I'm wanting to know how it ends
At least a moment before I forget.
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