Station of the Cross
We just missed each other
At the service station
The one with the crucifix
Glowing neon
Above the soda pistons
Such a polystyrene display
Of commodity salvation
It was easy for you
To stay away
Until the inevitable hunger
For grape soda
And Wonder Bread
Drew across your ribs
But by then
I’d come to see it your way
The automatic doors made it so easy
To slip out without buying anything
And if I was stealing
The surveillance didn’t care
They keep all the good stuff
Behind the counter
Wrapped in cellophane
How did we miss each other, coming and going?
The trumpets herald from heaven
Any time anyone trips the lasers
to alert the clerk of their presence
Like Abraham telling God “Here I am.”
Do not give me a stupid-simple parable
About our closing our ears to our brothers!
Brother
Friend
When it comes time for you to check out
Leave the fluorescence and find me.
I am here.
We will kiss on the lips
The way the apostles did
We will be like we were when we were kids
Playing stud poker
With Little Debbie donuts
What a sticky mess we’ll make
As we wager
On what hot dog condiments they’ll leave out
In eternity
On what would happen
If we shot a Madonna
With a pump action full of Corn Nuts
Yes we’ll be
That small and human
Drink light beer by the rack
Averting our Bud Ice eyes
From anything that looks like substantiation
As if the empty calories will save us
From the decarbonated ennui
Of starvation
Nature is a highway mitigation project
Hereby for the preservation of wet
Land
And the continuance of regional mobility
We consecrate this
Land
Beneath the dynamic joints
And reinforced joists
Over which traffic flows like our iron blood
Preserved by the benevolence
Of transportation management
Who foresaw
Spawning Chinook
Need not document
adverse effects
That preferred alternatives exist
In the environmental impact appendices
And statements of strategies
Wherein mandated metrics
Measuring motorist speed and distance
Coefficients
Are achieved in coexistence
With nesting scarlet tanagers
And 32-cent mallards
By a weighing and dividing
And accounting
So precise we could be talking
About Caesar in the granary
The Republic is hungry
But so does the Empire
Have its needs
Tributes are necessary
And so we accept into freshwater tributaries
The petrochemical seep
That has been known to cause
Egg-heavy salmon to fall
Into a brain-sick Dervish swirl
Not unlike a compass near iron
A fundamental phenomena
Negated by acute local circumstance
And we here now rest assured
that these Imperfections and misdirections
Are subject to stringent and scientific mitigation
Not so different from the lead blanket
Lain over a fetus
When its mother undergoes radiation
To figure out what’s wrong
Gravitational Geography
The rationality
Of the river
Is pure like
And perfect like
The Dearborn
In
Backpacker’s summer
When
Snow’s down to the dregs
And
We make camp at
First thunder
The rational river
At every inch
Measures
The plumb line
Of that inch
Of the world
It falls true like
Lead on string
And
When our
Nylon sacks
Are retired on
Bear-bag twine
We consider why
Rivers fall so crooked
–Winter is so abstract–
Why rivers fall so crooked
After so many billions
Of true lines
Napping in
Two p.m. light
Sun-off-snow
Projecting a thousand red rivers
Montana’s thousand blue rivers
From our eyelids to our eyes
We can’t sleep till we figure
This gravitational geology
It’s like
You say
It’s like
If we could make a topography
Of relativity
It’s like
You say
But it’s already silt:
Running though our knuckles
Leaving nothing in our palms
But sweat and the sweet
Crooked trout ferment
Of detritus left rotting
By the Dearborn’s receding
At season’s end
Daniel Person is a journalist living in Tacoma. He has written for publications across the West, including Outside Online, Cowboys & Indians, and High Country News. His story about Blackfeet tribal members using traditional practices to address PTSD was recently featured in the anthology Montana: Warts and All. He is also the co-author of the forthcoming 26 Songs in 30 Days: Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest. Lastly, though his employer wouldn’t use that term, he is news editor at Seattle Weekly.
