Blank Verse of a Blank Land

Based upon driving through central Nevada last summer, in response to someone who wrote that rural Nevada was "creepy as Hell."

They chose to call it creepy, but they’re wrong.

The sanguine rocks and salt-cream playas crawl

And ooze but never creep or sneak or steal.

Upstate Nevada’s far too obvious

For innuendos or dissimulation.

Peaches and cream, the desert sweetly sweats

As though the earth might actually be alive,

Or so my prejudice would wish to make it.

Baking in bright, dry dreams, with showery thoughts

At best, or none, it does not play at life,

Nor play at death. It does not play at all.

 

Eastbound, some distance west of Currant Pass,

The road shook out a laugh, and then went stiff

From swells to flats to swells, twenty-one miles

Presented without pretense, save for that

Which I projected: pale, abyssal plains,

An asphalt sine wave, calculus of travel,

The skinless earth, hot bones and drying muscle.

I’d find a distant mountain on my atlas,

And measure where it first came into view,

Drawing my vision’s compass into stone.

The continent is smaller in the desert,

With so much less for it to hide behind.

 

At Currant Pass, the grass and trees returned,

Canny components of a narrow world,

And blanching canyon branches, balls of shrubs,

High desert pines, nourished by shouldered clouds

With secret mountains up their skirts of sky.

An hour earlier, a squall had come.

The first rain in five thousand miles fell,

Near the Extra-Terrestrial Highway Junction,

As if it did not know that I were there

To catch it in the act, and contemplate

Seeing Nevada putting on her blush,

To paint her cheek upon the rocky-nosed

And sandy, staring countenance of West,

Without a care for interloping voyeurs.

Our fantasies are weeds that take their root

Within the hardest soil. They stand on stones,

The sharpest stones, until their cuts are grafted

Into the desert, inextricably.

There, in Currant Pass, the dough of earth

Was rolled and folding in, with salted crusts

And the hungry smell of heat. A dying house

And yellow grasses, waving, fell in line,

Because their colors were expected there,

Hot tones below a molten sugar sky,

Among the blown-glass pines and frosted canyons.

Abundance in abundance, overwhelming

Munificence in emptiness, and heat,

The gentle heat, most loving, saintly heat,

A continental blanket wrapped and curled,

A land of fleecy sun, tied bright and close,

A solar system soaking in a spring

Of hot galactic brine, and all that was

Or will be poured its herbs into the bath,

And I, a giant, standing over all,

Beheld and understood and mastered it.

 

But nothing happened. None of that was true.

The road was sliding on, the West rushed back.

The desert was a desert full of dreams,

Being beheld, and nothing else. No love,

No hate, no secrets in the shallow earth.

Upstate Nevada’s far too obvious

For innuendos and dissimulation.

Its value was no more or less for this.

One need but widen one’s corner of the world

And it will come; there is no infinite.

Author's Note

This probably could be tightened up. Let me know where if you think so.

Reviews

[Muse]

Your poem reminds me of Allen Smuckler's writings. I think I spelled his name right. Search him on the cafe. He always wrote about his travels and the places he's been. He now put all his poems in a book, I think he's doing okay with his self-publishing efforts. My favorite two lines:

Peaches and cream, the desert sweetly sweats
As though the earth might actually be alive,

Nevada, another place I have never been to. But now you make me want to go visit.

[VennelaMargame]

I wrote this in response to someone calling rural Nevada creepy, for all the wrong reasons. It was clear that they just didn't understand what the desert was all about, so I wrote this to show that with a welcoming sense, anyplace can seem alive and beautiful.

[VennelaMargame]

And I will look up Mr. Smuckler.

[Muse]

http://www.writerscafe.org/Allen%20Smuckler

I agree. Just like Iowa. I've been here so long I only see the things I hate. I no longer see the beauty of a sunset. The beauty of going to sleep with doors unlocked. Making eye contact with people and the casual hellos. You can't do that in a big city.

[VennelaMargame]

I dislike NYC for that reason, but I have friends who live in Brooklyn, and it's the one borough that I can stand...it's a little more casual and residential, while still having the gritty city feel. And it's a Russian-Chinese neighborhood, so the local flavor is interesting.

[VennelaMargame]

Btw, the picture that goes with this poem was taken at twilight on a desert ridge, toward the end of the drive described within. Bit of trivia.

[Muse]

The picture is stunning. I Wish to see a larger version of it.

[VennelaMargame]

It doesn't blow up if you click on it?

[VennelaMargame]

Hmm, here's an image url. https://scontent-a-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash2/t1.0-9/1010603_10100209300397400_1830775157_n.jpg