People going through
hard times don’t listen
to songs about people
going through hard times,
says my son. Debt, addiction,
chronic bad luck, unemployment—
I’m with you, I say. The only
exception is heartbreak;
when you’re deep in it
you just want a late-night
DJ to spin your pain. The car
radio is playing Jason Isbell
through Wyoming, part of it
in Yellowstone National Park,
home to 500 of the world’s
900 geysers. Mesmerizing
eruptions! Geothermal wonders!
Hot holes and fumaroles!
Last week a Bison
gored a Phoenix woman,
but who knows how close
she got before it charged.
Bison run three times faster
than humans and injure
more people than any animal
in the park—even grizzlies.
In thermal areas the ground
is just a thin crust above
acidic pools, some resembling
milky marbles, others the insides
of celestine geodes reflecting
the sky. Boardwalk signs
all over Yellowstone shout
Dangerous Ground! Potentially
fatal! and despite that—
despite the print of a boy
off-balance, falling through
the surface into a boiling
hot spring, his mouth an O
of fear—despite the warnings
in writing that more than
a dozen people have been
scalded to death here and
hundreds badly burned
or scarred, there are still
the tourons taunting bears,
dipping their fingers
off the side of the Boardwalk
into a gurgling mudpot.
Got a loan out on the truck
but I’m runnin’ out of luck,
sings Isbell, and the parking lots
are packed with license plates
from every state—so many
borrowed RVs taking the curves
too hard, so much rented
bear spray dangling from
carabiners clipped to cargo
short waistbands, and ample
Christianity too: the Jesus
& Therapy t-shirt, the Enjoy
Jesus baseball hat, the all I need
today is a little bit of coffee
and a whole lot of Jesus tote,
Mennonite families with
women in bonnets
hauling toddlers. I want
to tell my son it’s not
shameful to need
something or someone
to help us out of the darkness
when it gets very dark.
Jeff Buckley. Joy Division.
Jesus. Dolly Parton. Even
Delilah and her long
distance dedications
cracking the silence of
every solo backroad
I’ve been driving since
before he was born.
He is sixteen. Does he know
the black hole of loving
and not being loved in return,
the night and its volume?
And the moon—nearly full,
rising over Old Faithful
which erupts on cue
to an appreciative crowd
every ninety-ish minutes.
And the moon, keeping me
insomniac with its light
shining like an interrogation
trick into this cabin
through the crack
between the window
and the blind.
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