Where the Sky is Big Enough for Clouds

View from the Plane Descending to Denver (6 October 2011)

SpringHill Suites, Room 109, Cheyenne, Wyoming

I am in Wyoming for two nights. The purpose of this trip is archival, but poetry follows me everywhere. I read Martin Glaz Serup's new book <i>The Field</i> on the first plane flight of the day, and it inspired a few short poems by me. Soon, I'll write a few words about that, but not tonight. I'm giving an all-day workshop tomorrow, and I'll need a little sleep, maybe a lot.

The last leg of my journey to Cheyenne was by car from Denver. It's not a long drive, under two hours, but the wind was blowing hard, and dust was in the air. The young man at the rental car place called it a dirty wind and suggested we sit inside the car to talk.

Last time I drove up I-25 was in 1997. My family and I were taking one of our cross-country trips, and we were driving north looking for a place to stay. We wanted to stay in Cheyenne, but when we looked for a hotel there, we learned that there was a rodeo going on. (Over time, we learned that if a big rodeo was going on in the West, then we'd have to drive about 100 miles from the center of it to find a hotel room.)

So we kept driving, but we were low on gas, and there were not many places to stop. We were driving on empty, something that doesn't really bother me, though Nancy doesn't enjoy that kind of excitement the way I do. Finally, we made it to Chugwater and got off the Interstate. We found gas, and were fine, and all of this happened with minutes to spare before the station was set to close for the night.

We still needed a place to spend the night, so we drove north to Wheatland, stopped at the hotel there and got a room. Before we left the front desk, another family entered looking for a room and were told that there were no more rooms. We had the last available room in Wheatland, which was only 70 miles from Cheyenne.

The hotel was fine, with a fine little restaurant right next to it. The next morning, we met an older couple from Bear Mountain, in New York's Catskills, not to far from Albany, and they were driving across the country too. It was good to think of people carrying out such strange dreams so much later in life, it was good to have found gas and a room for the night, it was good to think ourselves fortunate, for at least one day.

And this has nothing to do with poetry (though something about the subtlety and somberness of the Wyoming landscape does remind me of Martin's book of poems).

Some days, the past just comes back to you quickly. Like the 75 mph speed limit here, with me doing 80 most of the way. Like the wind blowing sideways and dirty against my little hybrid vehicle. Like the sight of tumbleweed again.

Tumbleweed rolling across the highway. Tumbleweed being shattered by the cars that hit it. Tumbleweed shattering into smaller tumbleweeds that kept rolling. Tumbleweeds as this fractal plants, the internal structure of which could never be destroyed. Or forgotten.


Clouds from I-25 in Colorado while Driving North to Cheyenne, Wyoming (6 October 2011)

ecr. l'inf.