Mexico Seen from the Moving Car
THERE ARE HILLS LIKE SHARKFINS
and clods of mud.
The mind drifts through
in the shape of a museum,
in the guise of a museum
dreaming dead friends:
Jim, Tom, Emmet, Bill.
—Like billboards their huge faces droop
and stretch on the walls,
on the walls of the cliffs out there,
where trees with white trunks
makes plumes on rock ridges.
My mind is fingers holding a pen.
Trees with white trunks
make plumes on rock ridges.
Rivers of sand are memories.
Memories make movies
on the dust of the desert.
Hawks with pale bellies
perch on the cactus,
their bodies are portholes
to other dimensions.
This might go on forever.
I am a snake and a tiptoe feather
at opposite ends of the scales
as they balance themselves
against each other.
This might go on forever.
Michael McClure, "Mexico Seen from the Moving Car" from Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2011 by Michael McClure. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press.
Source:
Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems
(University of California Press, 2011)
