The Arrival of Superstition

We used to take the old Plymouth Satellite

on the back roads of the Fort Lewis Military Reservation.

The DuPont/Steilacoom road.

In the dark, the douglas fir stood so tall

their branches canopied the road

and blotted out the night sky

down to a thin ribbon of dim.

We used to follow that ribbon at 110 mph

with the headlights shut off

pummeling the suspension down the miles straight stretch.

I remember laughing at our teenage nihilism.

I remember the fascism of youth.

and onanist daydreams of middle class solipsism.

I remember disregard for concern as camp theatrics.

I remember boredom.

We used to lay in the shallow impressions

made by unmarked graves in the Western State Mental Hospital Cemetery.

When the moon was out

you could see the gutted frame of the old hospital

ghost faced white and wreathed in dead groves of walnut

the branches twisting into themselves in agony.

We used to lay in the graves and mock the ghosts.

"come into me, come into me."

What a show we could manifest 

in the face of indefinite abstraction.

It couldn't last.

I remember the accident outside the 1986 World's Fair

in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Dodge Tradesman van careened around the street corner

filled with beery laughter and the oldies radio pounding

In The Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett.

Wicked Pickett.

They got it up on two wheels and then turned it over and over

until it came to a stop against a lampost.

Everything was quiet but the car radio.

"I'm gonna wait 'till the midnight hour

when my love comes tumbling down.."

The driver was covered in diamonds of windshield and blood.

His passenger was still,

an ear pressed firmly against his own chest.

I remember looking at his twisted neck 

and feeling the ebb of puerile arrogance

and the arrival of superstition.