Psychedelic Nebraska
The drug I take while driving across Nebraska
Makes the great plains look just like Alaska.
Born from cornfields, fjords soar for the horizon,
Snow-covered spruce and caribou rise from the sloughs.
This drive's beautiful, but terrifying.
Yellowed grass slithers. Footprints in snow boast
Mastodon, Saber-toothed Tiger, unidentified hooves.
Mt. McKinley wheels you serpentinely into
Kearney, a deserted Inuit fishing village.
Waiting for the glacier-encased Amoco to thaw,
You notice one grim totem pole shows
A toothmarked schooner in a polar bear's jaws.
Albatross swoop like bad omens.
Roadkill's larger, more bizarre in high beams
When dragged by grizzly or wolverine,
Knowing what they'd do to humans.
Lincoln sinks, Kodiak Island rises. Fencelines,
Stark roadside assemblies of unemployed carrying the only roadsigns,
Icepick-bearing frontiersmen whose eyes you avoid.
You pretend not to hear the prairie's radio distress
Message from ships long lost to the Bering Sea.
Telephone poles, their wires entangled with crows,
Fall and rush on as the dogsleds of men frozen hoping to find gold,
Stolen by a tundra of wolves and ghosts.
Later, you'll say paisley overalls ruled.
Every last red hat in the state became the flames
Within igloos of basking eskimos
After you swallowed the right capsule.
Daydream after Rain
I am employed by the clouds as a rainbow chaser.
My iridescent business cards
Vanish, but work seldom calls.
Nonetheless, I love my impossible job:
Stunt-jumping from the company
Vehicle, a dust devil amidst tornadoes,
I sprint into thunderstorm winds
After diabolical, moving rainbows
As fair weather meteorologists
Plot against me. High Stress?
Heavens, yes! But I'll reveal
Why I keep my job:
Once I chase down a rainbow
The clouds allow one fringe benefit:
I may run across the narrow bow until
Its heavenly alleyway disappears.
You have no idea the thrill
Of falling through
An evaporating bridge
Of prismatic sunlight at high altitude
And having a cloud catch you.