Against Gravity

AGAINST GRAVITY
Blue sky, ungated clouds, & on a sand-pittedhighway sign the number 10 stands out--a minor footnote in a monograph on drugs,
a reference instructing the reader to studymy nap on the floor of a Ford Econolinesummer after high school. As if rest, & only rest,
were what we found ourselves made of, sometimes.Though rest is only one trait, actually, whenyou've been hitching between Tucson & El Paso
and gotten picked up by a van. The equally ingeniousothers look like tie-dye & restlessness, likerest stops & silvered heather, maybe jimson,
and a little lantana raising its nippled red specklesinto the scent of sagebrush rained on & drying.They got me high, three men & a woman costumed
estimably in the style of out-of-work jesters,jovial people of 1971, wearing the standard issue--fusty cloches, velveteen pants, embroidered emblems,
with shiny balls like cat bells danglingoff one or two ears. For one a self-etched tattoo,its motto the equation ACID=BLISS framed
by a multiplying fungus or exploding chloroplast.For another, a fu manchu & fedora. A synaptic Apachesnake cinching the woman's frayed macrame belt.
Mirror sunglasses for all. And small mirrors,like tiny ponds, frozen pools, had been sewnonto the woman's India print blouse by some
Kashmiri laborer, who, if he could have looked intothem, might have seen me dozing off, stonedon pan hash, bits of myself reflecting back,
scattered, a tired grin from the woman'sright sleeve, the puffed wrist, pale ear at the tipof a breast, nose on her stomach. And haven't I
always loved being broken up & abrogated by sleep?But when I woke we had pulled off the roadinto a ranch. From the tape deck "Brain Salad Surgery"
blared, a form of premature senility disguisedas endless synthesizer riffs. For a second, in the nazzand compression of noise, still stoned, I thought
they intended to kill me. An intuitionso melodramatic & dumb the sight of two of the menkissing in the front seat had to wipe it away.
 I had never seen two men kiss, & the surprise,which in another setting might have shocked,even disgusted, my sheltered murmurous little self,
somehow reassured me. The kiss implyingnot so much gentility as distraction.Then, out of the eddies of shade, the woman
ran, having tossed off her incongruous imitationalligator heels, naked now except forpurple tights, she ran & turned cartwheels
three times across the yard. Gravity.Gravity. They had wanted to visit a friendwho, they claimed, was connected to anti-
gravity research being conducted there.Merely a windbreak occupied byan adobe shed and barn, it seemed abandoned,
as if during the night the hard rains,the lightning, had chased away the enemyof gravity, & now we were to take his place.                                             -David Rivard, from Wise Poison (Graywolf, 1996).