Robert Creeley's Southern Indiana Poem

[Bill Zink]

Submitted for your approval:

"Follow the Drinking Gourd . . . "


Present again
present present
again present
present again

leaves falling,
knives, a windspout
of nostalgic faces,
into the air.

Car glides forward.
Drive from Bloomington,
Indiana to Lexington,
Ky. Here the walls

of fall, the stone,
the hill, the trucks
in front with
the unseen drivers.

Stoney Lonesome. Gnaw-
bone. A house
sits back from
the road.

A Christmas
present--all
present and ac-
counted for? Sir?

Passage of time.
The sun shone level
from the left-
hand side of

the land--a flat-
seeming distance,
left, east? South?
Sun shines.

Go on. Tell
me, them, him,
her, their
apparent forms.

The "present dented,"
call it "long
distance," come
here home. Then

a scarecrow there, here a
snowman. Where in
the world then an-
other place?

Drive on
what seems an
exceptionally smooth
and even surface,

the forward cars
way up there glint
in that sun of
a universe of mine.

And for twenty eight
dollars--all this.
All in the mind
in time, in place--

what it costs to rent
agency? Give
me a present, your
hand to help

me understand this.
So far, so long,
so anywhere a
place if not this

one--driving,
screaming a lovely
song perhaps, or
a cigar smoke--

"When they were
young in Kentucky
a man to freedom
took them in a cave . . . "

A famous song,
to drive to,
sing along the
passing way--

or done or
right or
wrong or
wander on.