Van Cleave, Ryan G.

English

eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi)

Yalobusha Review Volume 6 Article 6 1-1-2000 Navigation By Instinct; Tektite Ryan G. Van Cleave Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/yr Recommended Citation Van Cleave, Ryan G. (2000) "Navigation By Instinct; Tektite," Yalobusha Review: Vol. 6 , Article 6. Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/yr/vol6/iss1/6 This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by the English at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yalobusha Review by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact egrove@olemiss.edu. Navigation by InstinctRYAN G. VAN CLEAVEYou’re in the middle of nowhere and your little two door’s four-valve engine is protesting emphatically, the staticky legal-help talk show unjuicing the battery. It’s a black, black road that appears more of a watermark on a giant shale eye than anything.Straight as a school wall, it seemed easy enough to follow but now you’re sure it’s a preposterous maze as cruel as a complex algebraic equation that ultimately equals nothing.The man shuffling after the three-legged dog looked honest. Swing a left at the next intersection, drive east, then turn right twice and you’re there. It sounded terribly simple at the time.But now you’re confused and disoriented by the constant blur of  mountain laurels and fields of fire-black grass. It’s all strewn alongside the road like seeds on an asphalt lot, ordinary enough to lull you into a sense of security that vanished thirteen miles back, right before you met the guy with the lousy directions.It could have happened to any of us. But you’re the one there now and we’re glad it’s not us. It’s disquieting to be just out of reach, so distant and worried that you’re ready to confess anything, plea bargain your way onto a familiar highway. You roll  down the windows to cool off. The scent of violets and rain heavies the air and you inhale deep, then you’re heading south, past a bent telephone pole without wires, unattached to anythingLeft? West? If you go fast enough, everything will blue as it  bends towards you as you become light, a red beam like hydrogen lasers that beacon to a silver satellite among  the dark space particles, then you can be launched back down into someone’s microwave oven. A 35" tv, maybe. There’s no  way to say it with any magnitude of certainty, but you have the feeling you’d been there many times, with someone, somewhere, sometime long before this happened.16 1Van Cleave: Navigation By Instinct; TektitePublished by eGrove, 2000RYAN G. VAN CLEAVETektiten. a small roundish glassy body of unknown origin occurring in various parts of the earth.In the purpling shadows where the press of land unfolds into perfect arcs, a single measure of earth obsessive on its tethered wings, wanting always to take flight, blame the sky for its brooding; Here, below ground, where fathers and uncles lie in long rows, chains of bodies that snake the dark soil, a single mass of shiny rock, quartz-like and heavy, secretive, like a code no one ever learned to break. Momentary ice, hard as iron spikes, it bejewels  the darkness as trains clatter past overhead, the passengers sipping lattes and diet sodas, so unaware of what lies below, nestling deep with their childhood demons, who like bitter jailers rattle their keys along the bars, wanting out, wanting to hear again, their cries drowned out by the steel wheels on tracks,  the laughter of a boy whose father says no, that monsters don’t exist, that nothing but dark lurks under his bed.172Yalobusha Review, Vol. 6 [2000], Art. 6https://egrove.olemiss.edu/yr/vol6/iss1/6

Navigation By Instinct; Tektite

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Navigation By Instinct; Tektite

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