Driving and Drinking [North to Parowan Gap]

David Lee

North to Parowan Gap

Turn right up there
and get off these pavements
there aint no sense
to holding up the traffic
and we aint hurrying
you just turn there and that dirt road
goes out to the Gap
where them Indins wrote on them rocks
I remember the first time
I ever got drunk.  Me and my brother
we was following this branch back home in Misippi
when we seen a trail leading off
and he knew but I didn't
he's oldern I was and been down them trails
so's we went down and found it
any time you find a trail off a branch
you follow it . . .

Psalm of Home Redux

        after rereading Cormac McCarthy and taking
             a 5 mile run through the River Ranch
                                                     

                    Laughter is also a form of prayer
                                             —Kierkegaard

Okay then, right here,
Lord, in Bandera,
tether me to my shadow
like a fat spavined mule
stuck sideways in Texas tank mud
bawling for eternity

At midnight's closing whine
of the 11th Street Bar's steel guitar,
when the stars slip their traces
and race the moon like wild horses
to their death in the darkness,
let my hoarse

David Lee

2011

Parowan Canyon

When granite and sandstone begin to blur
and flow, the eye rests on cool white aspen.
Strange, their seeming transparency.
How as in a sudden flash one remembers
a forgotten name, so the recollection. Aspen.
With a breeze in them, their quiet rhythms,
shimmering, quaking. Powder on the palm.
Cool on the cheek. Such delicacy
the brittle wood, limbs snapping
at a grasp, whole trees tumbling in the winds.
Sweet scent on a swollen afternoon.
Autumn, leaves falling one upon another, gold
rains upon a golden earth.

David Lee

2004

Loading a Boar

We were loading a boar, a goddam mean big sonofabitch and he jumped out of the
pickup four times and tore out my stockracks and rooted me in the stomach and I 
fell down and he bit John on the knee and he thought it was broken and so did I 
and the boar stood over in the far corner of the pen and watched us and John and I 
just sat there tired and Jan laughed and brought us a beer and I said, "John it aint 
worth it, nothing's going right and I'm feeling half dead and haven't wrote a poem in ages 
and I'm ready to quit it all," and John said, "shit, young feller, you aint got 
started y

David Lee

2004

Poems

Driving and Drinking [North to Parowan Gap]

More by this poet

Psalm of Home Redux

Parowan Canyon

Loading a Boar

Poems

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Driving and Drinking [North to Parowan Gap]

More by this poet

Psalm of Home Redux

Parowan Canyon

Loading a Boar

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