Have You Driven A Ford Lately

He is pushing a black Ford
through an empty street –
a car like his father's
that beat the flat roads like wind
in summer and brought him here.

He never forgave his father.
That was the year he left home.
Then there was talk of weather
and everyone was packing.
Windmills were stopped
all over Kansas.

He is thinking of fathers,
the ways they never forgive you,
withholding love like lust.
But they quit, they stop like pumps.
There is no way to
set them working again.

He is thinking of mothers,
how she could not know how he
half followed girls down dark streets
of his heart, how that loneliness
is passed to sons,
to the fathers of sons.

He is pushing a black Ford.
Its problem is such a heart
you cannot give it enough care.
Like a father it will quit.
And there is no end to this.

Depression
by Henry Carlile

Futureworld

There was something eerie in the air,

An absence I could not identify.
An immense single-pump gas station,
Shimmering like a mirage in the heat,
Took up a good part of the main drag.
I pull in. Step into the heat stunned.
The car is too hot to touch.
I needed gas but didn't want to get it there.
It meant digging up the attendant.
  From  the poem 'PROVO'
    by Mark   Rudman

A Tree in the Clouds

Dirge in Woods

by George Meredith

A wind sways the pines,
         And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet, as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
         And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
         Even we,
         Even so.

Original Eco Car

Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River

by Robert Bly

    I

I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota.

The stubble field catches the last growth of sun.
The soybeans are breathing on all sides.
Old men are sitting before their houses on car seats
In the small towns. I am happy,
The moon rising above the turkey sheds.

    II

The small world of the car

Plunges through the deep fields of the night,
On the road from Willmar to Milan.
This solitude covered with iron
Moves through the fields of night
Penetrated by the noise of crickets.

    III

Nearly to Milan, suddenly a small bridge,

And water kneeling in the moonlight.
In small towns the houses are built right on the ground;
The lamplight falls on all fours on the grass.
When I reach the river, the full moon covers it.
A few people are talking, low, in a boat.

Red House

The Unforgiven

by Russell Edson

         After a series of indiscretions a man stumbled homeward, thinking, now that I am going down from my misbehavior I am to be forgiven, because how I acted was not the true self, which I am now returning to. And I am not to be blamed for the past, because I’m to be seen as one redeemed in the present…
         But when he got to the threshold of his house said go away, I am not at home.
         Not at home? A house is always at home; where else can it be? said the man.
         I am not at home to you, said his house.

         And so the man stumbled into another series of indiscretions…

The Owl and the Spirit

Dragonflies Mating by Robert Hass 1. The people who lived here before us also loved these high mountain meadows on summer mornings. They made their way up here in easy stages when heat began to dry the valleys out, following the berry harvest probably and the pine buds: climbing and making camp and gathering, then breaking camp and climbing and making camp and gathering. A few miles a day. They sent out the children to dig up bulbs of the mariposa lilies that they liked to roast at night by the fire where they sat talking about how this year was different from last year. Told stories, knew where they were on earth from the names, owl moon, bear moon, gooseberry moon.

Rescue Me

The Domestic Life of Ghosts

by Tom Clark

Whoso list to haunt could do worse than to
Obtain the license, get the picture.
Spook finders must find spooks to put the face,
Name and space coordinates together.
What is kept in the mind perimeter
Retains a wild autonomy through fate.

I will retreat to the precorporate.
Let fate have what is fate’s and allow
This spirit to slip through time’s difficult
Nets with the devious fingers of
A wild wind, while I run along behind.

Heaven and Earth

"Behold, the grave of a wicked man" by Stephen Crane Behold, the grave of a wicked man, And near it, a stern spirit. There came a drooping maid with violets, But the spirit grasped her arm. “No flowers for him,” he said. The maid wept: “Ah, I loved him.” But the spirit, grim and frowning: “No flowers for him.” Now, this is it — If the spirit was just, Why did the maid weep?