Amarillo
At six o’clock the road turned bare
as we rode through Tennessee.
From Nashville to Memphis is a long,
dark stretch of gray and brown trees
and fields where no one ever walks or works.
I’ve often wondered who owns those empty spaces.
The rains kicked up and splattered the windshield
with drops as big as plums, ten seconds at a time,
then dry a while before starting all over again.
For hours and miles, nothing changed
past Memphis, Little Rock, and Fort Smith,
until the sun came up somewhere the other
side of Oklahoma City.
Clear dawn revealed the dead-end of Autumn,
but hot as Summer. The enfolding hills
of home had unfolded into horizons
all the way to the curved edge of the Earth.
The fields were golden stubble and brown
and gray and white from no rain
at this dead-end since August.
These are fields where people work,
but do not walk, because there is nowhere to go,
as far as the eye could see, nowhere to go.
In that unfolded expanse,
there were sometimes brown gashes
where older rains had surprised the ground
with knife-edged, alkaline drops
and left miniature grand canyons
of momentary interest to whiz by.
Finally, we arrived home,
a place with roots deep in the Amarillo soil.
The family was gathered there,
faces of people who knew about horses
and no rain, the sharp spikes of cactus
and mesquite pounded into the surface
of that thirsty soil. Their roots went
deep enough to find a little harsh water
to nourish the music of parched conversation
over an informal Thanksgiving dinner.
Later we weaved through the cactus and mesquite
to a line of low buttes rising a hundred feet to
flat tops where we could see across
the quiet, dusty plain.A distant silver train
caught the sun, and rolled silently beneath us
in that Autumn heat.
A jackrabbit skipped across our path
like a stone on still water, and
some tired bird of prey from nowhere sailed by,
going nowhere.
The heat of that dusty day
bled into a tired Amarillo night,
so we threw off the unnecessary coverings
left in preparation for a cold dead end of
Autumn that had not yet arrived.
Vol Lindsey
11/98
Copyright © Vol Lindsey | Year Posted 2022
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