...Thunder Road...

Unpublished. I took a class with Henry Taylor at the Writer's Center back in 2000 and ended up writing a lot of rhyming and other formal verse. The bookstore in question is Second Story Books, in Rockville, MD. An unnecessary poem by any measure, except that it was sitting in the air waiting to be written. Or just watch this and think about being scared we ain't that young anymore...

Source: Victoria Belanger

On browsing in a used book store & finding most of the lyrics to “Thunder Road” inscribed on the inside cover of a 1977 Maryland high school yearbook

She turns & turning spins the air
to catch his words unbreathed, undrawn,
as Mary’s frozen bathtub stare
scours the polished suburban lawn.

Afternoon slants across the visitor
considered – borrowed car keys bite
his hand as Bruce sings out a passing car,
sings about a song on the radio: sit tight.

For who could always feel this way
(tell me you’ll never feel so bored) –
4 minutes 49 or all your life to stay
the sun’s flown arc on a spindle scored

by two dropping off the stack while I kept
on going, in quest of what comes after always:
to sweep & drink to remember having swept
away drink & desire as a passing phase –

but they’re still here down at the shore,
camped out in a shuttered summer house,
a flowered magnet on a cracked screen door
slapping vinyl siding – fried clams doused

in hot sauce & sand rest in the kitchenette,
for here no minutes tick & his shirt tail
will never be tucked, that cigarette
never smoked, PBR hasn’t gone upscale.

No way out but through, no way through
but to become, no pattern to become
but what is before them, true or untrue,
beyond hope the cake within the crumb.

Her hair would stream out behind her
even as she walked -- I grow old in
the recollection; she grows smaller
as a record erases itself with each spin,

as yearbook pages cling together
in ripening mildew & waterstain:
the taste of cold nostalgia warmed over.
On this flyleaf we’re sixteen again,

scouring lyric sheets for meaning
only we understood, decoding lines read
to say you are not alone in seeming
alone, the album split open on the bedspread

frozen in a pose we dreamed of living
then found no one could. I still miss you.
Come to your window: it’s me singing;
I need to believe you miss me too.