In a Landscape: III

It appears that we’re living (which isn’t always the case), depending

on how one defines such things, in a “now you see it / 

now you see it” kind of way. We can say we’re working on our age,

as well, listening to Bob Dylan songs where people can age

in whatever direction supports the theme. “Too bad life doesn’t

get themes,” Robin says, and yes, that’s right, and then we can all go

do whatever it was we were going to do anyway. “It’s either that,

or pay off the kidnapper,” as Neil Young had it, back in the mid-70s.

There’s always an analogue, and someone to tell us about it,

how, no matter how fast you run, you can’t run fast enough

to get away from yourself. You could even call it a theme.

For instance, I was the first one to an eighteen-wheeler accident

on the highway once, in the early 90s. I didn’t know what

I was going to find. It was just tossed there on its side, across

both lanes. So I got out of the car and walked around to the front,

only to see the driver standing inside the cab that was resting

on the driver-side door. He was simply standing there behind the glass,

parallel with the dashboard, a little blood on his forehead, looking

as lost as I felt, looking back at him. All his things (magazines

and maps and cigarettes and pens and snacks) in a little pile at his feet.

When I left, a guy was hitting the windshield with a baseball bat.

You go to the room, and the place you like to sit

is missing. This is an opportunity to trust, I suppose, or perhaps

for blind panic, if one were to consider this a metaphor

for something. But say it’s not, say there are no such things

as metaphors for a moment, and where does that get you?

Presently, it gets me to a row of green and yellow plastic chairs,

those 1950s-looking ones I imagine Kenton would like

to collect. They’re joined together by shiny metal clasps, chrome,

and the whole thing is full of sunlight through the plate glass

window. It’s the kind of scene I think of as lickable, how everything

looks like cheerful candy, and I wonder if there might be a way

to be there or here without a beginning, or without an ending,

or if perhaps there might be a concept for no middle.