“Age isn’t just a number, as we’d heard/it’s how we get here. I’m twice my daughter’s age/and neither thought we’d haul ourselves this far.”
for Sonja
1
We bomb down Lake Mead’s red volcanic rocks
in your fire-engine red Jeep Rubicon
two toys tossed in a geologic box
an afternoon of father-daughter fun.
Together, laughing, we dispel distant
ghosts of mutual bleak depression
now shrunk into a single, scorching instant
one-ten degrees outside, while A/C blows
our face and knees, bright souls unrepentant
of anything we’ve lived, the jolts and blows
metamorphosed into sport off-roading
by Lake Mead’s shimmering, mirage-like shores
as I imagine ancient sea floors spreading
to create this basin, giving you the space
to fully live, brain no longer dreading
the men, including me, who wrecked your peace
once you turned desperate thoughts to compassion
and brought me back into a tight embrace.
2
We’re much alike, corrosive, savage wit
life as a serious joke, sweetly mocked
yet with a golden reverence underlit.
We talk about it all: sex, food, work shock
no censor, no filter, letting words flow
of favorite stand-up comics and alt rock
bubbling, a river in drought-parched West
sprung suddenly to buttress crumbling cliffs
firs, bristlecones, like us, once out of place
adaptive to terrain, what made of if
no formation too strange, too late, too panicked
expansive cries replacing long-crushed reefs
understanding that if oceans can vanish
our conscience can mutate, our life revive
the blows be shaken off, the harsh and manic
ways we existed, simply to survive
give way to Cenozoic brash plateaus
and soft topographies of recent love.
3
Your friend’s cabana shields us from harsh rays
while he serves steak, kale salad and jackfruit
plies me with hard kombucha to appease
my thirst, solicitous, eager to suit
my mood. All is acceptance by this pool
where strangers crowd, submerged, trying not to wilt
the speaker’s Alt-J radiating cool
the host’s eyes sweetly taking it all in
while children plunk each other with a ball.
You fear this week you’re going to be canned
your ex won’t take your son to Broadway camp
and your beau said your taste in wine was crap.
Words turn transient phantasmagoria
illusions of mind destined to expire
or lived with, like three a.m. insomnia.
I give advice, but mostly I admire
your tact, quiet persistence, and belief
that you’re steadily climbing higher.
4
Age isn’t just a number, as we’d heard
it’s how we get here. I’m twice my daughter’s age
and neither thought we’d haul ourselves this far.
I had to divest of my inborn rage
of moods swinging like downed power cables
that shoot hot sparks, spraying random damage
and she, raised on idealistic fables
of perfect marriage, career, motherhood
deemed gifted as a prize horse in a stable
has strived to guide life by her simple good
while crashing through hard marriages, willful child
and stepchild, keeping close a female brood
of best friends, while hanging on to the wild
side of her, that untamed passion the two of us share
the need to hold in our hands the whole world.
5
I see her as a globe lit from within
glass thin but unbreakable, soft glow
that even in a snowstorm shines like skin
a living fire that melts through sheets of snow
letting wanderers spy the next crevasse
revealing canyons bathed in blue shadow.
Even from the precipice of a pass
a thousand miles away, I sense her mind
trained on mine, able to nimbly guess
my widest-ranging thoughts, as if the wind
carried a noise, not words, just syllables
a mutual communion based on sounds
for a new language, new myths, laws, fables
ones that don’t entrap us in the old gods
ones that don’t leave us corrupt, disabled.
I try to be her beacon too, her dad
but more than that, a human mind attuned
to each shift in the many-sided wind.
6
Her Jeep’s tough traction tires dig through dense sand
as if they might unearth buried doubloons
left by lost Spanish conquerors stealing land.
I’m sure we’re getting stuck, but like the moon
sliding through dense clouds
in the thickest band of a vast monsoon
her red Jeep, as if throwing off a shroud
slides through the trough and gives a mighty jump
as though Lazarus leapt to his feet, proud
new thrilled to feel between his ten toes clumps
of dirt, dying earth cold to his warm touch.
If he revived, he could revive this, pump
vitality into the deadest desert gulch.
The two of us, too, have that special power.
If only for an instant, we’re magic mulch.
Drinking bottled water to mark this hour
We toast, plastic on plastic, sounding like
the clink of finest crystal to our ears.
Johnny Payne is the arts editor at Merion West. He is a poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. He has worked extensively in Latin American Studies, especially literature under dictatorship and Quechua oral tradition. He directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles and earned his doctorate from Stanford University.
