Territory Drive
I went for a walk again today over the hilly street
bordering my subdivision
went a mile
to where the street splits
then climbed to where
the median strip
shelters brittlebush
and penstemon
in wild bloom and
there where the road split
I was relieved
of commodity and commerce
as the street was relieved
of our customary speed
to get somewhere.
The air was mild the sun sharp
desert light intense
as is my isolation
made requisite by a being or is it
a non-being dispersing
in the global humanosphere
noncellular nonmetabolic unable to grow
or replicate without a host
crumbled bunch of twine oily membrane
protein spikes that Velcro to human lungs
the virus needs us and we
the numerous comply
or not
walking alone noting
pleasures in the familiar that we had
once found abroad
Lyon’s silk looms
the Alhambra’s heavenly garden of Islam
Delphi’s mystic air
now it’s mica flecks
in roadside gravel
little stars in the firmament
of what keeps us grounded
when the angst makes us spin.
I don’t know how
to speak of grief I feel
the floor
break open beneath my feet fall into
abysms of the unthinkable just imagining
my daughter my grandsons…
but seeing the semis
lined with quick-built
wooden shelving
stacked with white-wrapped
corpses
the sheen and contour of the shrouds
I force myself to write
learning to see
each one of them as among my beloveds
each word an act
of defiance against the unspeakable.
I walked out and returned
the phainopepla
churring from atop the leafless mesquite
fearless in its black satin camo
matchtip flames atop ocotillos
the yardman
loading his trailer
with pulled weeds ring of shovel
scraping dirt
then heart swelling
at scent of orange blossoms
neurologic memo to the sense of smell
a paean to hope that my body
my brain can still equate with
spring and all
while the neighborhood
contracts behind disinfected doors
and we winter ourselves
keeping the difficult distance.
Alison Hawthorne Deming’s most recent poetry collection is Stairway to Heaven (2016). She is a Regents Professor at the University of Arizona and lives in Tucson and on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada.Read additional work by Alison Hawthorne Deming appearing in Terrain.org: “Letter to America,” “Spill Stories: Drag Racing to the End of the World,” “The Cheetah Run,” “Ruin and Renewal,” three poems, plus an interview with Alison: “A More Encompassing View of Human Flourishing.”
Header photo by Simmons Buntin. Photo of Alison Hawthorne Deming by Cybele Knowles.
