That Night With Keith

THAT NIGHT WITH KEITH We consider the withered modern metaphors: how our lives, like films, are deceptions, shuffles of memory flickering by fast enough to conjure an image, comforting continuous motion and the belief we are going somewhere. It is not so, this metaphor tells us: only the trailer, angry and insistent, flaps on the spindle. The preciousness of the poets wearies us. I lie in your hammock that night, yards from the river (tool of poets we admire), miles from the sheet lightning unburdening the sky. I can see the trees on the far shore darkly mirrored in the noiseless current, and I think there may be no deception here: no distinct instants of image can exist in the immeasurable movement of water – both river and trees progress unbroken. Then the air thickens with the deafening bellow of the train, and when I look back, I can see its single blinding eye in seconds lead the black snake of it steaming between the trees and their shadows across the river. That embarrassed epiphany when I realize this and understand dis-ease with the drunkenness of image: these cars, all here, all now, are our concern – this chain and the dark engine that drags it.

©2009 Joseph Allgren