it scrambles time and seasons
if it gets through to you
JONI MITCHELL
Sitting in the bus station
where else mister? tuning the transistor
thinking that lady waiting a good lay.
Wearing his snow white bandage
digital timepiece pentacle and earring
a silver razor blade to the throat.
Later with the wires to his head
coasting the big bird from Seattle
beyond the Aleutians and the Circle
or takes the long shift to Bear Island
waving to the Mig only kidding man
dropping down the Murmansk approaches
seeing the sky’s edge turning south
fuelwards to the Turkish bases
over patchwork Europe and rest up.
That’s one duty man over beer and smoke
later the same day boy that was close
shooting pool all the world one rush
through the skull one wing of geese
on the snowy wind of the prairie.
Between us and the stars only stars.
Six miles down only clouds more miles
over their shadows. The plane
in the bare knuckle light of the sun
makes at times a rainbow under itself
and the bright ring of colour goes with you
that I can tell you. Nothing for hours
over the Baltic probing the Polish margin
testing the Reds. Times out of mind
I’ve watched them trying it out –
Ilyushin or Bear or flock of wild birds
homing over such landscapes
that show in my scope still –
the long shores of cold where the ocean
batters its freezing continents
and if grass grows there it is chill
rasping and stiff in the sea-brought winds
at the tops of the world.
There the caribou come in spring.
Their hooves still thrash in the sea’s ebb
through the tales of the grandfathers.
All blips now. Data printout
as to latitude and the old ice geometry.
I’d quit but what else? I see
white sky on a white world, cities
stubbed out, ash blown catty corner.
I tell you I’d go on an acid tab singing
glimpsing at last a pattern in the grids
kissing goodbye all the ladies
on the planet’s side flying in
sliding under the radar yelling
this is a good day to die brothers
nothing lasts only earth and the mountains.