I'm in the air over
the winding brown Mississippi when
I get the idea.
Below me is a long
white showboat
heading up the velvet-brown river.
Each field on either side
a separate square,
or a separate rectangle-
this of wheat, this of cotton, this of corn.
Each farmer has hewed perfect lines,
perfect fields of America.
Sand glows white on the river corners,
and a river-nourished forest emerges from the plains.
There are no homes from this high up,
only tiny boxes.
This is the Midwest,
and I want to see it up close,
so much closer,
and with you.
I follow along my frosted aeroplane window
the straight lines of the roads
that meet at perfect ninety-degree intersections.
They all run so straight,
so parallel and perpendicular,
it makes me dizzy.
Only the river has curves.
It must be hard to get anywhere
if you have to drive so straight all the time.
This is the Midwest,
and I want to see it up close,
so much closer,
and with you.
You and I riding out West,
chasing some idea of America
we got from songs and books and movies.
And maybe it's all a lie
--the open land,
the corn,
the small towns--
but we have to find out
for ourselves.
The summer heat is deadening,
but we're cool in our rental car
and free all night to talk.
Everything's so flat once we past Topeka,
like our lives of
simply being for one another.
There are no rocks or crags or mountains
to hide our truth
or shadow our existence.
From my blue aeroplane seat
I can see into the future, see us,
a dot on the road
pulled over
to lie in perfect Midwestern grass
(not the scrubby east coast weeds).
We're asleep,
nourished by the stillness
and the meaning of the pastures.
This is the Midwest,
and I want to see it up close,
so much closer,
and with you.
[Come drive with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That plains and meadows, farm and field,
And all the grassy prairies yield.]
I want to bathe in
the Midwest with you.
I want to venture all over it,
The dead flat center of the world.
[Come drive with me and be my Love...]
Flying has become
so good.
The Midwestern beauty
touches me
until I don't know right from wrong,
only what is below,
and what we will see.
It's all stretched out for my descent
and ultimately for our future transcendence.
[Come drive with me and be my Love...]
We'll find a mildewed but
charming motel with a scrub-green pool
and glistening tennis courts.
We'll check in,
bounce on the mustard beds,
and spend the afternoon working.
I'm transfixed by
the blue glow of the computer screen
by the way it illuminates you
as you write philosophies.
And I smile at you,
but you
don't see me.
We have some rum and then
early bedtime.
We wake up early
for a round of tennis
and a breakfast in the lounge,
bright with the smoky curtains
splayed apart.
I have:
a quarter cantaloupe
1 thick slice of French toast (with Vermont syrup)
a bit of butter
1 piece bacon-burnt
home fries-the stringy kind-well done.
I also have tea and English muffin.
I barely touch my food,
but you devour:
4 pancakes
2 bacons
2 sausages
2 eggs
1 large glass of milk
and home fries-the stringy kind.
Our eyes meet over this gigantic feast,
over the once white, now cigarette-yellowed carnation.
Our cheeks are still flushed from A.M. tennis.
When our smiles bud, we both realize that this is all we require:
Breakfast foods cooked to order.
Life spent alongside one another.
The early-morning Midwestern sun.
A car packed and ready to hurtle us deeper and farther westward.
It's our own America here.
It's not serious, but we
get some serious being done.
[Come drive with me and be my Love.]
This is the Midwest,
and I want to see it up close,
so much closer,
and with you.