No apologies...

[iamkatia.livejournal.com]

Stairway to Heaven

We’re deep into the seventh hour of the trip,
the car packed with electric guitars and pint-sized
speakers, skateboards and fishing rods,
crumpled copies of Thrasher and Mad.
Ray is riding shotgun—they switched
at the last stop as agreed. One minute
they’re yelling every cuss word they know
out the open windows, the forbidden syllables
swept beneath the tires of trucks, the next,
they’re asleep and dreaming, twitching fingers
and bare toes, their shaved heads lolling
on the torn upholstery. But now, Dan’s reading,
and Ray’s looking out at the river, skipping
through stations on the radio when he hears
"Stairway to Heaven" and freezes,
snaps his head around to each of us, his mouth
open in the absolute O of exquisite luck.
We listen to the guitar bend out its solo
and everyone’s still. The train straining
up the tracks beside us. The moon
hauling its solitude into the sky.
Ray looks at me with fire in his eyes, says,
"Doesn’t this part give you the chills?"
We nod in agreement, then settle again
into our separate worlds. In mine,
I’m crying, for any boy who’s brave enough
to be stunned, to open his heart
to such desolate notes, to sit perfectly still
and offer his spine to the mournful tones.
The mountains are waiting to swallow us whole:
a lonely woman and two quiet boys, listening
to a sadness called love.


~ Dorianne Laux