LJ Idol Wheel of Chaos: "This Lonely Highway"

[halfshellvenus]

This Lonely Highway
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 16, #1
Kako no ashoito (memories/events/influences from the past)

x-x-x-x-x

Wheeling through the dark,
light lost to the stars
and the city far behind us,
we travel the barren highway
toward a distant promise.
The moon gleams cold as ice.

On a looming hilltop,
a lone steer stands, starkly
black against the dimness behind it.
The unfenced land crowds close,
the highway an inky ribbon
stretching into the night.

Nothing thrives in this desert,
in this unforgiving land
along the road to somewhere else.
Time waits frozen, as unyielding
as the desolation
of this lonely, forgotten place.

Wakeful, I watch the hills unfold,
mark a field light's deathly glow.
Ghost songs on the radio
float up through the static
in this in-between nowhere
caught so very far from home.


--/--

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Comments

[halfshellvenus]

This imagery has been with me for years, from trips going from Oregon to Utah as a child. It would always be dark as we went south along the Oregon/Idaho border, and there was never anything out there but the occasional cow or barn, or a single ghostly-gray light mounted on a pole. That light and the feeling it evoked was always somehow even more desolate than mere darkness alone. It seemed as if we could be lost out there forever, never arriving anywhere ever again.

[alycewilson]

You've done an excellent job of evoking the feeling of this memory. It reminded me very much of a specific memory I have: making our way home from seeing live opera while on vacation in the rain. The water pooled in the dimly-lit streets and looked, to me, like puddles of ink.

[halfshellvenus]

Thank you! We made that trip several times, and the forlorn feeling of that long, lonely section has always stayed with me. It seemed as if we could be stuck there forever, never making it out of that in-between place. I think that was my first encounter with what could be described as "eeriness."

[roina_arwen]

On a looming hilltop,
a lone steer stands, starkly

Hubby and I have driven around that vicinity before; I think I’ve seen this or something like it - what I recall is a metal steer or bull sculpture on a hilltop. A lovely and evocative poem!

[halfshellvenus]

Oh, this would have been an actual cow, just somehow separated from the herd. There's a lot of free-range grazing in that region, and some of the cattle really roam away from everyone else.

I still wonder about those lights mounted on poles-- maybe one every 10 or 20 miles, randomly placed on the side of a hill. What were they for? There was nothing to illuminate. They somehow made those areas even bleaker than they already were!

Thanks for reading and commenting! It's especially nice for poetry, which sometimes feels as if it gets overlooked.

[roina_arwen]

I asked hubby about the lights (he spent part of his youth on a small farm, and also knows a lot of odd facts) and he says:

“It's probably pump lights. Windmills are placed randomly to pump water for livestock. Lights which are powered by the windmills are placed over the tanks at the base of the windmills. At least that's what it sounds like to me.”

He added that he would have to see it to know for sure, because the other option is “It could also be some sort of utility access. Outside on the plains in the middle of the night, they sometimes have solitary lights, indicating where their equipment is. Keeps them from having to search around in the dark for it.”

So if that doesn’t solve your mystery, at least it narrows it down!

[halfshellvenus]

Yes, it does! It makes much more sense than "adding to the gloom." As I remember it, there weren't any windmills but might have been small sheds next to some of them. An equipment shed--I can see wanting to know where that is. In the daytime, the pole itself would be a kind of marker.

Thanks!

[inkstainedfingertips]

This is really stark and, for me, has a really ominous and lonely feel.

Ghost songs on the radio
float up through the static
in this in-between nowhere
caught so very far from home.

Your final section here, really caught my attention. For me, it feels packed with emotion. There's longing. There's grief. There's a whole lot more. It's a fantastic skill to evoke all of that with so few words. But this stanza really encapsulates that feeling of longing and loneliness for me.

Beautiful work.

[halfshellvenus]

It's so wonderful to hear this! Those are exactly the emotions I was trying to convey there, so I'm glad they came through.

That part of the drive was always like being in some spooky limbo state that, at the age I was then, I didn't even have words for. It has always stuck with me, for its bleakness and strangeness.

[drippedonpaper]

I really liked this poem. We took road trips as a kid and I enjoyed the night riding most of all, when almost everyone was asleep, except Dad who was driving and often me.

I miss my dad. Due to circumstances, I don't see him often. I miss those times that felt like just us.

You draw with such beautiful imagery. Thank you for sharing!

[halfshellvenus]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed this one. :)

[rayaso]

Great poem, as usual. You usually write fiction, but your poems are always memorable. I loved the lines "Ghost songs on the radio/float up through the static". It sounds so lonely. I have been on trips like this, also through eastern Oregon, but I always had great company. The imagery here is so lonely and empty.

[halfshellvenus]

I thought I'd used the line "ghost songs on the radio" in a story years ago, but it turned out not to be true. It has been waiting to find a home forever, always related to this setting or something like it. And all of this imagery... I think it's so much clearer and starker as a poem. Prose would only water it down.

Thanks for reading and commenting!