something I wrote last year around this time of year....
Fallen leaves are golden, sentimental, lying disheveled on the winding
Silver Valley dirt roads that take me to work, my mind recalls
the view from 30,000 feet, the approach to Spokane just beginning
to give me that feeling of lightness, change unchangeable, New York
earlier that afternoon had been gray with slivers of oblique, smoggy light
playing across the thin profile of the Empire State Building
viewed through the grimy little window of the airport lounge-
so utilitarian, my thoughts stopped as I gazed absently
across the 10 or so miles of industrial holocaust
towards the shining apparition of New York.
I hated Spokane, not just the time I wiped silent tears from my face while
rudely slurping soup in some half-rate strip mall Chinese restaurant,
the surgeon said my jaw was broken- damn mountains,
damn ambition, 2008, July, the light was still hot and muggy overhead,
I left for what I thought would be, the last time, somewhere before
the first.
People dreamt here, but they were small dreams, crowded, narrow, poorly lit,
Spokane sucked up the suburban drivel and made it sadder, urban without renewal,
somewhere there were outcasts, leaders, believers in life and not just heavenly
ambassadors of judgment or hate, of crystal meth and baggy sweatpants,
filthy from walking the decaying blocks, proud old Victorians
crumbled under the harsh October light, of opportunity limited.
Perhaps I hated Spokane because I saw farce I was living, the endless adventures
and new boarding passes, postponing a mildewy apartment here? No.
This much I know is true.
Or was it that night in the airport hotel, they better not make me pay for the sheets,
goddamn that was good, tried to call you
but you weren't interested, my departure to LA the next morning
so smug and early, smiling until I forgot to be self conscious
I didn't want a damn relationship
just more
of that.
You were so Spokane, in the best and worst ways I saw later,
though I don't know if I'm addressing you or me
when I quote a sketchy Denver drag queen I overheard on Colfax one night,
she told the sweet, diesel scented sky, 'Girl.... you trippin'.
In any case, this doesn't help
my forced disconnection from the golden yellow leaves, aspens and Tamaracks,
sad hillsides of the Silver Valley alive with the sun's premature departure,
I’ll win this one with myself, screw the internet; the social networks,
I'm going for a bike ride.
The trails are all boarded up for winter, by which I mean
they let them go because fun is only
for paying tourists in the proper season.
so I smile reluctantly as I clear heavy branches and wet, matted leaves from the
narrow, winding profile of the Alhambra Trail,
named after a wonderful lead-silver vein right up the road
but 'Silver Mountain' doesn't entertain such facts; too useful.
The woods are always dark here and I want to shout out
'Hey Bear!' to the brooding, fallow logs and hollows dead for winter
but I steel myself against the woods, this one is for
the war in my head.
Breath comes short and rewarding, the high of mindless exertion only real
Past the next corner, the next ridge, the next straightaway.
The gondola sleeps until snowfall, obscene and gesticulating
over the poverty and sense of community
here in Kellogg.
So I must go up, because up leads to down, and if I just get one of those
laughs that escapes your throat involuntarily
like an overdo fart,
it will be worth it.
I push, mostly, sometimes pedal, it is steep, unrelenting, solitary,
just how I like it.
