"The Last Road Trip"
I'm driving east to Goldendale Observatory, side-
winding the Columbia past Grand Ronde basalts, scrub
oak and ponderosa, pulsing upstream on a rush
of road to deliver my father to the stars.
All day, the badlands of his head are in my rearview
mirror; horseshoe scar on the occipital rise
is a reminder of the neurosurgeon's faith in luck.
My mother drifts among the talus near Memaloose --
the island in the river where native Chinook
once buried their dead in cedar vaults. The last night
in the hospital, she sent all the relatives
from my father's room, and closed her body
over his like the lid of a casket. I veer
off the highway at Biggs, and climb high into biscuit
scabland where little grows but the sky.
At the observatory, I cradle the Williams-Sonoma
cookie tin inside my jacket; my feet read the braille
along the path to the vacant amphitheatre. Everyone
else is inside, viewing a binary star or Jupiter's moons.
I've never seen the Milky Way so clear -- a wide contrail
of sugared light split into halves by the Great Rift.
Oh father, how we laughed that night on the boat when you had so much habanero sauce, you said
your head would burst into flames. Then your hood caught fire from the gimbaled lantern behind you.
I open the can, and the hard wind on the hill accepts the dust.
Above me in the dark, every plane cruises west.
© 2009 Patrick Anderson
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