Joshua

Joshua


The first day it was nothing
a base with trunks
twining out like branches
curling confused like days
when time’s had too much to drink
Leaves the color of old girlfriends’ names
forgotten so long the mind sees them
as nothing but a dull shade of regret
and mauve, the kind of thing
witnesses to violent crimes never remember
but which writers of bad fiction
always purport great significance to
in the minds of the victims.

The second it was snakes swaying
in the breeze of enthusiasm riding the drab
lawn like a comb over the earth’s bald spot.
After the tour of the kitchen (All this will
be new we’re redoing everything don’t
even look at what’s here now because it
will all be different.) the living room
replete with fireplace (Gas so all you
have to do is flip a switch none of that
messy lighting the fire business)
we finally noticed the tree outside the back
bedroom window (We’re landscaping all this
all new grass.) (I like the tree.)
I commented for no real reason at all
other than that I did.

We’d seen other places
one house by a very nice park we often
drove to and
walked around once or twice
to burn off a couple inches of guilt.
Pricy was the problem quiet neighborhood.
(Are we quiet people?) She asked.
One place out in the country had
well water cows. (Were those gunshots?)
I asked. Then the owner showed up.
(You'll have to get used to me
taking pot shots at skunks first thing
in the mornings.) (What exactly do you mean
by morning?) (Oh, 4:30, 5.) He said
with a muddled look in his eyes
like I’d said something suggestive
about either his daughter or his truck
but neither had trees.

Somewhere in there it became
a joshua tree though I’d never seen one
only read the liner notes of the U2
album of the same name, and vaguely
remembered something about Canaan
from the bible. It seemed like what a
joshua tree should be; wild vaguely
reminiscent of an archetypal scene in a
film I’d dreamed about for years.

I drove over after work snuck around back
thinking about the life we’d have here
joshua tree in the back
raised bed flower garden in the front
smores over the fire
porch sitting Canaan the sort of
place you bore your children
talking about when they go off to college.

The fourth we brought a friend to see
left him standing after awhile near
the front while we laid our plans out
on the air like blueprints. Came back to
see him talking to a neighbor about
a case of domestic violence


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Poetry Midwest