What They Mean by “America”
from What They Mean by “America” and Other Poems,
page 1
ISBN: 1-931002-27-4
Petaluma, 2003
$7
What they mean by “America”
Is what you see out of Pasco
When the tan undulations end
With that vineyard to the west,
Pinned to the Horse Heavens,
That long parade of Lombardys
At the vineyard above Paterson,
The thrill of Columbia’s gorge—
The Columbia is the whole meaning of the West—
And the McNary Bridge girders
Giving a flash-ruggle, flash-ruggle
As you quaver to Umatilla
The sky huge, boats pass under and
Gulls fly over to The Dalles
East of the freeway, before Hermiston,
The model of an American town,
In the middle of a great factory-campus
And armies of parked cars
A giant clean American flag
Dominates the scene—it seems
A quarter of Connecticut—and your mind is
On Seneca and Harney and all that wild space
Of Steens Mountain, Abert Rim, Malheur Lake,
And you think too of that deep-gray elevator
You’ll see looming from the wheat
West of Pendleton, the only structure for miles,
And of dread Cabbage Mountain,
America’s most fearsome climb
With the most awesome views
In your side vision ever that giant flag
And a sense of great spaciousness
Ethereally green but stolid,
Beauty staked by reality,
A freight train is snaking,
It looks a toy nuzzling a far hill—
Space, space, a sense of the River
And succulent Irrigon
I was never so stirred
By a sudden rush of pride
In what this much merely implied,
Since this was but a hint of the country,
For, driving, looking,
That massive flag waving,
The relentless glory of trees—
Unplanned, quickly my eyes teared
And my spine chilled:
This is the drive where you see
What they mean by “America”