Out past the motels where town ends
and all the weather starts and the windy
grasses rattle their dried bracelets
Greg swung his pick-up off the dusty road
and we wobbled westward over ruts, looking
for some place safe to shoot.
What does being “American” feel like?
Steering the sights of his .357 magnum
from lucky rock to rock, I could feel
the solid handshake of its grip adjusting
me again in the comfortable old stance
that cap pistols set us in as boys.
Our trigger fingers light, whimsical,
we’d point, peremptory, directing
that hypothesis from tree to rock to darting
Indian to Kraut. This stance redoubled us
as in the batter’s box, bats cocked.
Drop your guns. Keep your hands up. I expected
someday to own guns, to wear a tie.
Steering the magnum’s trustworthy weight, sparing
a bush, sparing a dry patch, sparing a tree,
I parked my sights in front of a rock
where, on flatter ground, third base might be.
If it’s possible to “feel” American
it was the first Bam boxing both my ears, numbing
half my face as, Bam, the limestone flared
a whiff of smoke, went out. Bam.
The valley harvested another crop of echoes
broadening into luxurious redundancy
upon redundancy. It was the thrill
of having your hands on so many cylinders
at once, all of them extra,
more capability than I would ever need.
Some Basic Aesthetics
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