I'd like to begin with a poem called "The Hitchhikers."
"They burn you like the berries of mountain
ash in August standing by the road clearly defined
autumnal brilliant, head scorched
from waiting in the sun.
How can you pass them up?
But you do and dream each night of a hill where
you are a hitchhiker, and no one will ever stop to pick you up.
Excuses.
I'm a woman alone.
I'm moving all my books.
I need the time for thinking.
One of them might murder me.
But really, it is the look each one gives me of need,
desperate need, 'pick me up, or I'll fail to reach my goal.'
And that need frightens me, so I look away, speed on,
dream each night of a mountain ash with its bunches
of orange berries gleaming like the failures of my life burning
beautifully on the tree.
Oh, hitchhikers!
Hitchhikers!
And they remind me that I drive across country often looking
for your face in each car I pass,
or which passes me knowing you would not hitchhike either.
Thinking of the two years, I spent with you,
reliving them over and over knowing
I had everything I wanted, but like Midas, was
silent and stiff with the gold I had touched.
Felt always as if I had been buried under a ton of diamonds.
Still feel the dust of them glinting on me
as I drive across country.
My hair sparkling with the brilliance you left.
And those hitchhikers, reminding me of hell, that I had,
what I wanted once and lost it, failed, watched myself
failing, still not understanding why I failed but knowing I did.
And still passing 65, 75, 85 miles an hour.
Those hitchhikers burning by the side of the road,
burning like the berries of the beautiful mountain ash,
burning like my tongue on fire, burning me
as I sleep protected in my rings of fire, the gleaming car which
hurtles me through America.
And all I have is not enough.
Mountain ash.
Not the ash from out of which a bird
with glinting neck feathers who flies suddenly up on the road
in front of the swift car would come.
Not the ash on the foreheads of holy sinners.
Not the ash of immortality.
Ash, a tree with its berries not the color of any jewel, not
the color of blood, but a rare and exceptional color
given only to plants.
And I see each one of you as I pass on the road,
burning like the autumn berries.
And the beauty makes me pass by quickly.
In my car is an altar, sacrificial stone, and knife,
the tears of blame and understanding and blood.
All the blood my body has lost.
Oh, hitchhikers!
Hitchhikers!
You would not want to travel with me.
You would not want to travel with me."