WEBVTT

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This one's a little
more concrete.

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It's one of the few poems I ever
wrote about high school days

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because my high school
days were so miserable.

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And basically maybe
it'll help you out.

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It's about an I. I suppose
it's me in the poem who

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goes to a high school dance.

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You remember your first high
school dance, how embarrassed

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you were, and things
just wouldn't work out,

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and girls were dancing
with the girls,

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and the boys were sitting
up in the bleachers?

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No?

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Well, any rate, that's the way
it was at my first high school

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dance.

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Begins with a quote
by Emerson which is,

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"Wherever birds fly,
they are flying home."

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And I think that will--

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the appropriateness of
that will come through

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by the end of the poem.

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"The High School Dance."

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The wise man said,
"Wherever birds fly,

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they are flying home."

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In his own state we believe
him, for here they are circling,

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having kicked off their
pumps in their stocking feet,

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drugged women,
arms around women.

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I stand up in my
bleachers watching them,

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remembering the carnation truck
that went off the mountain

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curve last year above
our farm to become

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a constellation over the town.

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Seeing the four kicked
out, do I really see them?

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Hose, one, nozzle, and dolly,
previews of themselves,

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drooling criminals.

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One time around with a plumber's
daughter, and that's enough.

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I love her, but at
arm's length, her eyes

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are Olympic pools of water
about to bubble out of control.

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So out in the
parking lot, I stew

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alone drinking the home brew I
made, yes, from orange peels,

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talking to myself,
but ever more aphasic,

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my alfalfa hair ever
more wild yearning

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toward the stars going over.

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And finally after
they've all filed out,

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and cursing Max has
closed the place down,

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that pile of stone with
light shining through once

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again returned to stone.

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I start up the old rusting
tractor, its cylinders popping,

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jog all the way back
standing up in the saddle

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through the tunnels
of the country roads.

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Every once in a while
through a field of shaking

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the stars loose with my
fist until up on a hillside,

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I hear xenophobic
rouser loose again,

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barking, lost, miles
away from home.

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