Fargo Fandangle

In Fargo, there are no leafy sea dragons floating in their seaweed homes, no seagulls circling the black steeple of the Pontoppidan Lutheran Church on 4th Street.

When the clouds break, a shaft of sunlight drops like a ladder from some California in the sky where we could drive through hills the color of ripened soybeans and arrive at the vineyard gate, ready to sail away in long boats bearing an unmistakable resemblance to Viking ships, their sails as dark as wine.

In a Rented Car

She drives, and I watch familiar fields go by, my foot rocking the cool cradle of my sandal.

The car is white with a blue interior. How like a cloud it is, carrying us over hills, racing its shadow.

The years between our then and now are thin as paper; we flip them back and forth like pages in a book.

After a fifty miles, we begin to tell each other the parts of our lives we like best, we make pronouncements.

We come to decisions about things we have agonized over; doubting, we invoke the ghost of time slipping away.

A hundred miles up the road, when the small town of our childhood comes into view, we slow down.

The church steeple pokes above the roofs, the water-tower lifts its paunch on thin legs, We imagine walking up Main Street as if we had no idea how soon we would reach the end.

It Was Like This

Driving, we did not count the miles as we glided over concrete and tar listening to voices on the radio and in our cell phones or to the sound of rubber and steel on the road.

We never imagined we would have to stop this way of moving, that we would have to step back onto the earth itself, that distances we once erased would reappear.

We thought we could drive our Chevy to the levy forever; we thought there would always be gas in the tank, tanks in the ground, and oil like five easy pieces to keep us primed just like the way we thought our hearts would always keep the beat and bring the blood out and back again to make us last forever.