Applegate Trail

deviant art by bentolman


Applegate Trail


a.

The clearing

*Nothing, not even the purest, most wrenching
love, can escape this era's shadow: a cancer
of the subject.* Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe


Fire and pain are the language that brings
this world close, speaking in the broken
dialect of life's countless betrayals, memoirs
of places where each small battle lost adds
to cumulative martyrdoms.

In the grass signs of a massacre, flints
that will strike no flesh, wagon ruts lead
into the lazy shade. The tall trees
their own accusing witness, here before
freeways burned into the landscape.

With the birth of something cruel
comes a fragile pain that climbs
as if the minds eye can only take in
so much before it starts to wander,
layering in textures its own reality.

Alive, exposing old hurts, we lick our wounds
as hot blood runs before us like red clouds.
Trying not to get in our own way we see
the why of things as a trap, needing to know
the how of them instead.

b.

Each comes away from this clearing
following the trail of their thoughts
disposed to loose themselves behind
recollections of their own experience.

In the hot sun some prayed for a miracle
that would save, making all things clear.
But time pays no attention. Our tongues
are cracked leather. It hurts to say things.

c.

As the river speaks
only with itself
headless in its foolish rush
so shall it be with me.

The flood has come.
There is no explanation.
We drown, murdered
by what needs to be said.


Scott Malby

Posted over on Ariga


Scott Malby is really the pseudonym for Prospero Moses who lives in a state supported institution on the Oregon coast. His reading habits are eclectic. Right now he is reading Robinson Jeffers.