Explode Blue
My father and I bounce
fifteen over the limit
down Highway 37
in his rumpsprung
1982 Ford F150 pickup truck,
and I lean out that hand-cranked window,
out into that diamond sharp autumn day.
The wind catches
in my ears
and in my hair
and I inhale, deep and long.
That whole big sky,
clear as the eye of a kitten,
floods in through my nostrils
fills up my skinny chest
and I hold it all inside me for a long time,
until feels like I can’t keep it all inside me anymore.
Like I might just explode blue.
------------------------------------------------
Every time we slow down for a stop sign
Stella, the flop-eared
German shorthaired bird dog
in the back end of the truck
scratches in her straw.
She's eager to get out into the world,
and we’re eager too.
We holler back at her,
“Yeah yeah, girl, we’re gonna go get ourselves some birds.”
But before we go get ourselves some birds
we’ve got to do the ritual,
sacred as Jesus.
The ritual my father and I perform
before every hunting trip.
We pull in
to the Super America,
and buy ourselves a bag of Cheetos
and a bottle of Doctor Pepper.
Oh, Cheetos and Doctor Pepper!
Our personal Eucharist,
sprung from the sublime confluence
of twenty three mysterious flavors
and one not-so-mysterious flavor -
cheez with a Z.
On the upholstery of that old truck’s bench seat
in the grease spot scrawl
of our orange-laden fingerprints
is written the story of all our adventures together,
and today our dusty hands write the story
of the last hunting trip my father and I will take
before I move off to the city.
------------------------------------------------
Back on the road again,
we fill our bellies with artificially flavored fuel,
pull off at the farm,
let Stella out into the world,
and she bounds off,
ears flopping everywhere,
as I load up my twelve-gauge
for the first time all by myself.
And we walk.
We walk for hours,
through the brown stalks and blackberry briers,
through the marshes and the maple groves.
We walk all day,
over creek beds and hillocks,
and over dry rushes
that crack underneath my feet.
And the sun falls,
hour by hour
more and more
orange moving into red
until it’s down among the leafless trees at the edge of the field,
reaching up like long, spindly fingers
to carry it back home.
We’re almost back to the truck
to go home ourselves
when Stella goes birdy for the first time
next to a stand of sumac,
and adrenaline trickles down into my fingertips
as my father gives her the order to flush.
------------------------------------------------
I feel the thrum of that pheasant’s wings
deep in my skinny chest
long before I see her rise out of her roost,
and then she is beyond the thicket,
wings beating slow now
as she traces a lazy arc
over that setting sun,
brown and grey tail feathers
trailing out behind her
like a long smear of oil paint
against an orange and red canvas.
She hangs there in front of me for hours.
Nothing in the world
but me and that bird
held together
by cold, sharp air.
Held together
like two flies caught
in a drop of amber.
------------------------------------------------
I've lived in the city
ten years now.
There aren't many dry rushes
for me to stomp through here
and the closest thing I've got to wilderness
is Cedar Lake,
just down the road a couple miles.
Ten years was long enough
for the bustle to get in my blood.
Long enough to learn to love
the smell of blacktop
after a rainstorm.
I couldn't go back there again.
Not to live.
But I keep that moment with me
the way some people keep a worry stone,
in the hip pocket of my soul,
and on autumn days
when the wind cuts just like glass
I take it out
and I run the thumb of my mind
over its textures.
All that beauty
just floods right back in through my nostrils.
It fills up my skinny chest,
and I hold it all inside me for a long time,
until it feels like I can’t keep it all
inside me anymore.
And that's when I take a long walk
down to the Super America.
I buy myself a bottle of Doctor Pepper
and a bag of Cheetos,
and I go lie out on the shore of my lake.
Look up at that big sky,
clear as the eye of a kitten.
And I wait
to explode blue.
My father and I bounce
fifteen over the limit
down Highway 37
in his rumpsprung
1982 Ford F150 pickup truck,
and I lean out that hand-cranked window,
out into that diamond sharp autumn day.
The wind catches
in my ears
and in my hair
and I inhale, deep and long.
That whole big sky,
clear as the eye of a kitten,
floods in through my nostrils
fills up my skinny chest
and I hold it all inside me for a long time,
until feels like I can’t keep it all inside me anymore.
Like I might just explode blue.
------------------------------------------------
Every time we slow down for a stop sign
Stella, the flop-eared
German shorthaired bird dog
in the back end of the truck
scratches in her straw.
She's eager to get out into the world,
and we’re eager too.
We holler back at her,
“Yeah yeah, girl, we’re gonna go get ourselves some birds.”
But before we go get ourselves some birds
we’ve got to do the ritual,
sacred as Jesus.
The ritual my father and I perform
before every hunting trip.
We pull in
to the Super America,
and buy ourselves a bag of Cheetos
and a bottle of Doctor Pepper.
Oh, Cheetos and Doctor Pepper!
Our personal Eucharist,
sprung from the sublime confluence
of twenty three mysterious flavors
and one not-so-mysterious flavor -
cheez with a Z.
On the upholstery of that old truck’s bench seat
in the grease spot scrawl
of our orange-laden fingerprints
is written the story of all our adventures together,
and today our dusty hands write the story
of the last hunting trip my father and I will take
before I move off to the city.
------------------------------------------------
Back on the road again,
we fill our bellies with artificially flavored fuel,
pull off at the farm,
let Stella out into the world,
and she bounds off,
ears flopping everywhere,
as I load up my twelve-gauge
for the first time all by myself.
And we walk.
We walk for hours,
through the brown stalks and blackberry briers,
through the marshes and the maple groves.
We walk all day,
over creek beds and hillocks,
and over dry rushes
that crack underneath my feet.
And the sun falls,
hour by hour
more and more
orange moving into red
until it’s down among the leafless trees at the edge of the field,
reaching up like long, spindly fingers
to carry it back home.
We’re almost back to the truck
to go home ourselves
when Stella goes birdy for the first time
next to a stand of sumac,
and adrenaline trickles down into my fingertips
as my father gives her the order to flush.
------------------------------------------------
I feel the thrum of that pheasant’s wings
deep in my skinny chest
long before I see her rise out of her roost,
and then she is beyond the thicket,
wings beating slow now
as she traces a lazy arc
over that setting sun,
brown and grey tail feathers
trailing out behind her
like a long smear of oil paint
against an orange and red canvas.
She hangs there in front of me for hours.
Nothing in the world
but me and that bird
held together
by cold, sharp air.
Held together
like two flies caught
in a drop of amber.
------------------------------------------------
I've lived in the city
ten years now.
There aren't many dry rushes
for me to stomp through here
and the closest thing I've got to wilderness
is Cedar Lake,
just down the road a couple miles.
Ten years was long enough
for the bustle to get in my blood.
Long enough to learn to love
the smell of blacktop
after a rainstorm.
I couldn't go back there again.
Not to live.
But I keep that moment with me
the way some people keep a worry stone,
in the hip pocket of my soul,
and on autumn days
when the wind cuts just like glass
I take it out
and I run the thumb of my mind
over its textures.
All that beauty
just floods right back in through my nostrils.
It fills up my skinny chest,
and I hold it all inside me for a long time,
until it feels like I can’t keep it all
inside me anymore.
And that's when I take a long walk
down to the Super America.
I buy myself a bottle of Doctor Pepper
and a bag of Cheetos,
and I go lie out on the shore of my lake.
Look up at that big sky,
clear as the eye of a kitten.
And I wait
to explode blue.
wrubrecht@gmail.com
