Outside, the fly buzz summertime and the yawning repetition of asphalt and truck stops. Mile markers. Heat that rises from the ground. When you get to the center of the nation, on the plains, in the heart, it seems like everyone’s going either all the way east or all the way west, and whichever way you go it’s hard to feel at home until you get there. Most likely I’ve been a fool.
She tightens in her sleep, curls up, a child’s pose. She’s been with me so long I can guess she’s dreaming of Mastodons, of the biggest herds that used to cross the whole of this continent. They’d migrate and chew it all up. I bet she’s dreaming of following on foot, right behind them. And when she tightened in her dream just now I bet she was curling up for the night in the womb hollow of a footprint.
Most likely I’m a fool. Still, when she wakes we’ll get back in the trailer and keep on going.
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Composition notes:
I didn't have much today, nothing fresh at least that I had brooded over yesterday. I saw the word Mastodon in a poem on poetrydaily.com earlier today and I just decided to write from that first word, nothing else to go on but that. The image of the woman sleeping on her side came first. Interesting what came out after that. I've been on the road and I started to want to recreate that. But then I don't know where it went. I know it's hopelessly opaque, mostly because I can't ever decide which side of the backstory line I'm supposed to come down on. Maybe its more interactive that way. Your thoughts?
I love "Most likely I'm a fool." There's a sort of informing honesty to this that back tracks you through the story and colors it in a way that you can't see at first.
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Is there already a codified idea of impressionism in literature? This feels impressionistic to me and with the first read I felt like it was a little disorienting until I got to the last line which somehow seemed to link everything together for me. Maybe it's that I kept expecting some sort of narrative and was denied it until the last line which served as an exhale for my expectations. Really beautiful, Aaron. I love reading these.
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