A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

Evening drive

by Patricia | 3.26.09

by P. G. Karamesines

Mountains and evening: aspen leaves
Pale as moth wings,
Reclaiming the wood.
The car clove spring.
A flock of yellow petals, heads hung—
I wanted to stop,
But seeing you, said nothing.
You were not much in your face,
Your words, better remembering
Some breathtaken childhood
On this exalted road.
On the peaks, winds blew
Clouds to dust
In parching cold.
We rode through green flush below,
Windows pleasantly rolled down.

With dusk, winter came a little down.
On the road above the gorge
I sat in the window.
Raindrops broke across my face,
Burned off in the wind.
You turned the wheel
As if you held the reins
Of a mare, a bold girl
Standing on the saddle.
Beside us like a hound
The river ran panting.

The last brightness came down
Cascades branching like ivy.
Your mountains, losing
Their faces like sleepers,
Slumped out of the light.
The car went always
Toward the edge of that small clearing
The headlights cut.
Inside, your face,
Your chest, glowing faintly
From dashlights
As if you stood in a room
With a fire.

When I came in at last,
Breezes still running
Over my skin,
My hair cool as grass,
I had no warm words.
You had no cold,
So we sat like two birds
On the same wire.
I thought,
Language is an odd thing:
We can get no further
Than what we have words for.

 

First published in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film;  Volume 8,  Number 1 (2006), pp. 100-101

Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
Filed under: Nature poetry, WIZ's Spring Poetry Runoff

5 Responses to Evening drive

  1. Th.
    March 26th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    .

    I’ve been wanting to write a poem on just this experience for some time now. Yours captures it quite perfectly.

    The final sentiment is an issue I’ve been discussing with my AP kids lately and it makes we wonder, most of all, what God’s language may be like. Have you read Paul Auster’s City of Glass? It reminds me of that.

  2. Patricia
    March 27th, 2009 at 8:21 am

    Th.

    “Just this experience” being …? I’m curious.

    I haven’t read Auster’s City of Glass. I’ll keep an eye out.

    In Man Made of Words, Scott Momaday explores in interesting ways man’s linguistic and rhetorical nature. A couple of samples:

    Man has always tried to represent and even to re-create the world in words. The singer [meaning: Native American singer] affirms that he has a whole and irrevocable investment in the world. His words are profoundly simple and direct. He acknowledges the sacred reality of his being in the world, and to that reality he makes his prayer as an offering, a pledge of his integral involvement, commitment, and belief.

    And:

    Linguists have long suggested that we are determined by our native langauge, that language defines and confines us. It may be so. The definition and confinement do not concern me beyond a certain point, for I believe that language in general is practically without limits. We are not in danger of exceeding the boundaries of language, nor are we prisoners of language in any dire way. I am much more concerned with my place within the context of my language. This, I think, must be a principle of storytelling. And the storyteller’s place within the context of his language must include both a geographical and mythic frame of reference. Within that frame of reference is the freedom of infinite possibility. The place of infinite possibility is where the storyteller belongs.

    I like both of these, but especially the second. I very much like language as the place of infinite possibility where the storyteller belongs.

  3. Th.
    March 27th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    .

    “Just this experience” being …? I’m curious.

    Driving through nature and the curious sort of communion possible.

    I haven’t read Auster’s City of Glass. I’ll keep an eye out.

    To be specific, what I’m reminded of is the issue of a perfect language, which is what the novel deals with in part.

  4. Patricia
    March 27th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    I should write a poem about perfect language, get the matter out of my system.

  5. Th.
    March 27th, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    .

    Yeah. Good luck with that.

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