time-piece

A small boy in the dark back seat
looks steeply out of the window
of an Oldsmobile, spiraling in fog
down through the mountain night.
An Oldsmobile going down steeply
toward a sleeping impossible town.

The road and the town and 1960
are all tilted, and the lights ghostly.
Things get stuck on looking eyes,
so nothing will ever make sense.

And the mountain is too dark for providence.
All spirits asleep in their legends and glories.
And the Oldsmobile rumbling goes on tilting
through the Arkansas fog full of meaning.

His father drives so steeply down
from wilderness dark, on a mission.
And less like a town than a village,
that valley has just one shop open.
On the logic of a dream, he drives
as if the world no longer is breathing.
And the boy has forgotten to breathe
as they approach that one light glowing.
It is yellow and pale and seems speaking
about things beyond all impossible towns.
Of a heaven where nothing has meaning,
while his father and mother go shopping.
They drove here so steeply on a mission
to purchase a chiming wood mantle clock.


Because the boy got so stuck looking,
the future of fog holds no chiming.