Behind the bend
“Leaving a place, there’s a feeling like you’ve just missed something...”
I’ll be moving today—not far away and hopefully for the last time in a while. Here’s a prose-y poem I wrote as I was leaving SF last October. Enjoy :)
Behind the bend
All day I was on the verge of disaster.
When I was driving and the kid gleefully
jumped out into the road
I swerved and stopped, barely avoiding him in
anticipation.
After dinner when it was dark,
I drove by a grazing deer, its head
nearly in the storm drain.
I couldn’t stop long—a car came up behind
and as I pulled away I watched in the rearview as its headlights
formed a halo around the deer’s head.
Then both disappeared behind a hump.
I was on the verge of revelation,
so I rerouted to Grizzly Peak Boulevard, a winding road in the hills
where during my high school years I would wander
in my black car.
Ah! the wind through the windows was the same wind,
stiff with fog and bliss, and I layered in
old tunes.
Back then I would sit in the shoulders that hang over the hillside
facing sweeping views of San Francisco,
but now they’re blocked with logs
to protect us, I suppose, from our darker inclinations.
On one rainy day, Connor took a hard left and almost sped off the edge—
Michael did.
Anyway I found a gap
and looked out over the city, where I now live,
and not for much longer.
My family left here two years ago to live in the desert. Soon,
I follow.
Leaving a place, there’s a feeling like you’ve just missed something—
that behind the bend something is shifting, forming,
which would tie together all of your days and nights there
into an unbroken chain of understanding.
Of course, the encounter never comes. You leave in a tumult,
nothing to separate memory from fate.
✤
I rediscovered this song recently when Spotify started auto-playing after a Deerhunter album. It got me to revisit memories and emotions from high school. Weird to hear a song that I haven’t heard in a decade—even more so when it’s as haunting, deep, and poetic as this one.
Holy ghost
Tripled host, I saw
Carry me home
On the backs of beasts that droneHoly sky
Opened up so wide
Carry me home
Scared me to the bone