A poem

Dug this out of the archives a while ago. I've been too busy/too tired/too writer's-blocked/busy-reading-instead to blog much lately. So here's this.

Fields

I drove fourteen miles today

through the same potato fields

I passed the summer I drove Jordan Tait’s

red Honda CT 110,

skipping grammar class

to wear my father’s old leather jacket

and go joy-riding.

That same year, between sessions of April’s

general conference,

we rode his motorcycle—a real one—out to

Barney Dairy Road

stopped and wandered through the same graveyard

that Jacob Chapman and I would eat cereal in

years later.

Just talking.

I’m surprised the car has made it this far today.

Riding out here between sessions

of April’s general conference.

This car is rusting away at the edges

and like so many things, it seems about to die.

Every day I think “This week, this month, this year,

it’s going to die.”

And every week, every month, every year,

it rustily carries on.

You press the gas pedal and the damned thing

just keeps going forward.

There was an afternoon in these fields

when Shaun Scrivner and I drove and drove and drove

I remember some old potato bunker

roof gone

that we climbed around in.

I sometimes wonder if I dreamt it

Lately, most memories seem like that.

Too surreal to have actually happened.

You get out of the habit of making things extraordinary.

You get too old to unthinkingly say yes.

We go through days when we are

as ships in the night and when I drive,

I imagine—I keep picturing—

that I’ll see Jacob, meet him in a field somewhere

between the cemetery and that roofless potato bunker

and he’ll play the guitar

and I’ll keep saying yes

and we’ll pull everyone out of the cave behind us.

So many things keep going.

Ted, the car, marriages.

And every few years, I sit in the driver’s seat of a car
and write a poem that feels important.