What is this the year of?
You are probably at least a bit familiar with the Chinese methodology of referring to years relative to their zodiac signs: year of the dragon, year of the dog, and so forth. If you didn’t know, 2019 is the year of the pig. And I won’t belabor the point, but that concept is the jumping off point for this week’s prose poem, the Year of the Long Drive. It’s just a jumping off point because it doesn’t address the Chinese zodiac animals directly. It only uses the concept that a year can have focal point, a theme, a rallying cry.
I’ve covered a lot of ground in 2019 so far. Guatemala; Costa Rica; Washington DC; New Orleans, LA; Gettysburg and Antietam National Battlefields; the Flight 93 Memorial in PA. Then a long trip to South Dakota and back by car, in which we also managed to hit parts of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. We also drove to the DC, Gettysburg, and Antietam locations. So I think this year is the year of the long drive for us.
Rather than give you more words to think about, I’ll just drop in a few photos after the prose poem, though I couldn’t begin to cover the poem’s scenery with just a few shots.
Year of the Long Drive
It is the year of the long drive, the car vaycay, the stops and starts. It is the year of starting over o the idea of vacation, the year of the battlefield, the year of someone else’s sadness makes good stories, the year of aren’t I better off than they are or were, the year of I want to turn the television and radio off and seek solace in the sixty foot metal bull sculpture containing tiny forged and welded bats, and a demon, sacrificed, inside.
It is the year of killing grounds covered over with grass, places the dog goes crazy as soon as he is out of the car pulling so strongly on the leash. The year of learning blood odors stay in the ground more than twelve decades, the year of stone parapets and castles to mark where they fell. The year of bug spray and tick defense, the year of summer colds and mushrooms in the yard. The year of popcorn like a trail of breadcrumbs and both remembering and forgetting our ages and burying a few more dead.
It is the year of far horizons, distances unblemished by scale and comparison. Long green days and storms abundant. The year of finding the WPA projects, the dog park in the next town, the best place for ice cream and pizza. The year of winding roads and don’t look down and the farscanning eyes when you come off the road and gee we should have done this sooner.
If you enjoyed Year of the Long Drive
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.