JERRY MARTIEN ~

Issued from Longhouse 2023

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JERRY MARTIEN ~

Getting Over the Distance Between Us




Sometimes I think it's true that territory

Is only how far we're willing to go

To get to the girl or boy next door.

Geography is really all we have to talk about.

I want you the names of three rivers, I say.

She mentions softly two ranges of mountain.

Over the hugest most western rock, I complain.

She answers with ocean, tides, storms, miles of sand.

I'm reminded of the fault between us.

Of the ups and downs of differently shifting plates.

The tendencies of continents to drift apart.

She is unmoved.

Though again and again I fold my maps, go home

To be among familiar birds and flowers

She knows what latitude and longitude

I'm set on. What long-sought passage.

The trail of abandoned lives and furniture

That follows the heart of discovery.

Another life. Another country.

It always begins at the border.


                  Arcata / Capetown / Petrolia



________________

Jerry Martien
Pieces in Place
Blackberry Books
1999

JERRY MARTIEN ~

Dream of the West


Driving through the country of the otherworld as I passed
a small town I pulled to the side of the road. I don't know
why I stopped. The sky was dark but the busy highway
and the roadside were just like our world in the middle of
one of its ordinary end of everything afternoons. It could
have been Oklahoma just before a tornado or the bomb.
I was driving a big American car, a Ford LTD or maybe
it was a Continental. The edge of the road sloped sharply
down, then dropped off much faster than I expected. The
huge automobile lurched downward and stopped sideways
on the precarious slope.

I could see the situation from several points of view. The
busy highway. The little Okie town across the fields. My
car ridiculously stuck. Then I saw other cars had gone
off this embankment. Some were part way down, some
farther. Rusted, abandoned. At the bottom of the long
slope a sunny grove of trees. There were people living there.
People in some of the cars.

Just below my car there were some Indians whose car was
older and much worse stuck. There was some
argument. Whose fault it was they'd gone off the road.
Then we began to laugh about our common
predicament. I could envision a big yellow tow truck
coming to my rescue. The whole nine one one. The cable
reaching down from the highway to bring me up again.
But it never came. I never called.

I've been living down here ever since.



——————————
Jerry Martien
Earth Tickets
Bug Press
2017