FROM COLVILLE ST. TO ALDER ST.

FROM COLVILLE ST. TO ALDER ST.
by Denis Mair

I’m a moth drawn to a glow that soon fades
Where is that cherishing fire still tended?
At crossings where nobody watches
Someone may be lighting up at any time
I hate to see so much charisma wasted
I lurk in traffic, along the sidewalks
I try to glimpse those transfiguring faces
My detector misses intermittent beams
I edge past long skirts of someone’s depression
I too have hidden deposits, but easy to drive by
For drilling to the quick, what could be better than kisses?
What wellhead could pump up more fuel than a wounded heart?
When a certain fly-fisher stops at her roadside haunt
I identify with dark water at the stream’s bend
When she sits in warm nearness of a horse barn
I want my nose-blowing to make a whickering sound
I’m impressed with the range she ranges over
Walla Walla with an overlay of sacred geography
The valley of the shadow of death down Colville Street
While walking to work she caused me to notice peaks
Right here in town, and one of them might be Gethsemane
What with all those books on whales, rats, and locusts
Her head becomes an ark for creatures large and small
Who offer a chorus of advice about new recipes
Her feminine side is known to auctioneers
Reckoned as a force for fashioning charity wreaths
Here’s to throwing out pills that do no good!
I’ll drink her health with St. John’s wort
To see her in restless kaleidoscope dreams