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July 4, 2002
The Fourth of July;
Independence Day;
The American Midsummer
Just back from Montana, into the humid heat of the east, unrelieved even by night. Out west there was a daily swing, temperatures gliding through thin air. Night came cool and cobalt blue, bleeding black into vacuous pockets between innumerable stars.Vega, at the zenith, for all that blue-white fire, cannot heat the night, except the sight of it may warm the heart.
Too warm, I try to sleep.
Too many thoughts infest the heat.
Memories spool through, confused, unsorted; images parade before me: people; places; dogs and mountains; rivers; dinners; wine like fountains. Bluebirds; black birds; gray birds; yellow...
Swept downstream, I beach on shallows;
walk along the river’s shoulder; dance upon the rocky ridges; soar with swallows through the canyon.
I catch myself; was I sleeping?
Awake in the city, I’m aware of America.
Not where I’d been; there the land was just the land, tending to its own business. I heard no news, checked no mail, knew nothing but immediate surroundings. Words from afar now remind me. Montana is surely as fine a place as America may offer, but there is no mountain you can stand on that holds a continent in view.
Only the understanding that we lie beyond the horizon, too.
From sea to sea, we call the countless places one.
Yet our ocean border lies even upon the inland heights where this continent divides; whispering in canyon strata, five hundred million years away.
More recently,
we stake our claim.