Heat Lightning & The Last Train

 

Heat Lightning

 

Seventy miles from Moab
you grew silent in the passenger seat
as we saw the sky burgeon
with dark blue thunderheads,
watched them metastasize as the
last light drained into a thin line
of fire on the horizon

The vastness of the storm outstripped
the desert flung on either side of us
as we hurtled through the night,
lightning veining sideways
in the distance

Earlier in the road trip
we failed to stop at that chapel
in Sedona, the one that juts out
from the coppery butte like a fossil,
proving it’s possible to belong
somewhere

This morning our wordless surprise as
we lay braided in the room’s black canyon,
your face cradled in the crook of my arm

Now, in this moment, I want to
have something to say, wish
you would speak, as the storm clouds
obscure every fiery freckle of stars
and the synapses of lightning
blossom into an orange-violet glow
where the road vanishes

Perhaps it’s not too much
of a stretch to say:
the universe is a cathedral of sorts,
an ocean of oxygen, carbon, energy,
but mostly
darkness; space—
like the blind exhalation
before prayer.

 

The Last Train

Steins, New Mexico, 1944

 

He slumped against the mercantile store,
hardly daring to glance at the other
stone-faced men. Everyone had heard
what the trainman said when the
Southern Pacific gleamed into view
that afternoon like a mirage.
What would they do for water?
The old rock quarry beyond the tracks
offered no condolences. It had
bent his back and stolen his son,
hardened its heart to the town.
The yellow stars of the creosote
bush at his feet would unfold when
the rains came. For now, rooted
contentedly to the scorched earth,
it sighs in the evening breeze,
in no need of a place
to lay its head.

---

 

Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate poetry, has work published in or forthcoming from Appalachian Heritage, Third Wednesday, Texas Poetry Calendar, and One Sentence Poems. The above poems were inspired by a three-month, 10,000 mile road trip, during which he explored the music, history, and geography of seventeen states.