Friday, August 21, 2020

Of Masks and Western Swing

Cab Calloway seems to emanate from the wind caves
Heigh-di-heigh-di-heigh-di-ho
As if he'd never unleashed his yodel on the world before.
And there we were, yearning to learn the Cowboy Cha-Cha
As we turned rawboned the switchbacks outside Lompoc,
As if it ever was a style, and the ten-gallon hats were realer
Than they appeared to us now, and spurs once de rigueur
To anyone but Mexican laborers.

                                                             There’s so little left
For a person to disappear into, and the dusty road promises
Only pockets of belonging: A few familiar flags
In half-full gravel lots, a scattering of cabins where
It’s safe to taste the vintages,

                                                      The holes in the wall
Where we yield the wheel, and our trust, in the lights
Of others, implied or real. They pose at tables,
As if no longer part of the earth, too vulnerable to love
And too stoically bereft of alternatives.

                                                                        So they give it over
To the county blue blush of the serpents who dance, even here,
The death of a thousand points of view: All of which go
There’s nothing you can do. 

                                                    Granted, the day was hot,
The fumes of a highway on fire forced strange and serpentine
Detours. But we know now that what goes on below,
Beneath a thousand feet of lime, is unspeakable, done for us,
In the name of control, so we can learn a dance
Of our own.