I'm trying to write the poems I assign to my students this year. The first one is supposed to be a song about the expansiveness of America, in the vein of Woodie Guthrie.
Hell’s Canyon
Heat slick shimmers on the open road,
the lines like scabs cross the desert’s back.
Someone scattered me across the land,
I’m looking for the pieces in a broke-down truck.
America, you can be so cruel--to
celebrities, to the nobodies,
to the haters and the makers, bring
them all to their knees,
but I heard the secret from the
western sea,
said America, you’re lonely just like me.
Another truck-stop breakfast, another droning TV,
everyone telling me what not to be,
but down in Hell’s Canyon, the wind didn’t fight
and the land didn’t argue, ‘cause the land was me.
America, you can be so cruel--to
celebrities, to the nobodies,
to the haters and the makers, bring
them all to their knees,
but I heard the secret from the
western sea,
said America, you’re lonely just like
me.
All night you lingered ‘round the edge of a dream,
you were sucking on sugar cane, raw and clean.
Said the road runs west, it’ll never end,
made a map of my life, I’m going back again.
America, you can be so cruel--to
celebrities, to the nobodies,
to the haters and the makers, bring
them all to their knees,
but I heard the secret from the
western sea,
said America, you’re lonely just like
me.
