Voyage to the Sun (fixed up version)

Dear Subscribers,

I sent this poem out in two posts because I hadn’t finished it when I posted Part 1. Then, when the next weekend came around, I felt I had to send out the second half, even though it needed a lot more work. Because why? I didn’t want to keep you in suspense. In other words, a botched job.

All this by way of excuse for posting the combined, edited mildly different version below. You’re not required to read it but you’ll get extra credit if you do.

Bill Nelson

		Voyage to the Sun

The July 20, 1963 Solar Eclipse

Arcing east and up,
largely ignoring Japan
kissing goodbye to Kamchatka,
eastern penis of the Soviet Union,
vaulting the whale-house the fish-freezing Bering Straits,
benighting vacant Canada,
bending south bisecting Maine in equal halves
whence plunging into the Atlantic like Beowulf.

Zones of Totality as the world
spins widdershins to watch
the sun's eerie black 
doomsday stare,
and the night of impossible stars.


Danny

A Greyhound bus to Boston 
hitchhike north from there.
Danny likes the idea, thinks,
changes the subject
and abruptly agrees.  We shake on it:
two nerds against the world.

Weekend nights perennially
axiomatically dateless,
we pick the bones of school and life in general
watching Zacherley if he was on.
Madame Knox, par example, French Four,
whom we plot one day to undress,
especially the blouse.
Or Mr. Klochek.  Gym, sex ed., drivers ed., dumb,
too dumb to know how dumb.
Klochek instructs us that the missionary position
is the only position God will countenance
to the exclusion 
of any other position
or positions
our nasty minds dream up.

I call the night before.  The bus
leaves from the Port Authority at seven, so
Danny says something important's come up
and he can't, he's really sorry.

Hitchhiking

Warm night, an empty road,
diffuse brightness
dawning through groundfog
incarnates as headlights.

It slows, almost to a stop, and goes
taillights to embers and out.
Alone as I had never been,
alive as I'd ever felt.

A Thunderbird with a dashbpard hula dancer
swaying on the bends;
a bumpy pickup carrying
a load of dynamite, so he gravely says; 
ans nothing for hours on end.
A cop stops and asks if I'm all right.


The Meeting

Totality enters Maine 
at 21 degrees above the horizon,
at Matawak at 5:47 pm then
soaring south at 1,280 mph,
down the Alagash, the length of  Eagle Lake, 
skirting monadnock Mount Katahdin
past one horse towns too numerous to name,*
I-89 to Bangor, 1A, 184, 3, Bar Harbor and gone.

Jumping down from a friendly big-rig
into a flashbulb day, a squinter.
When I get my eyes back
to my right a mown field, 
to my left a rusty diner. 

The girl behind the counter
in a light sleeveless dress, ponytail, pretty,
watches me over the coffee cup.
Hey, you're cute.  What'r you doing here
in Aurora of all places? What's an eclipse? 
Want a refill? What's your name? I'm  Jennifer.

Jennifer. I'm in love. Jennifer....
I decline the refill and cross the street
to the empty field, lighting a cigarette for solace.


The Field

Clovers purple and white everywhere
squeezing up through stubble and new grass;
islands of  black-eyed susans;
blue-eye asters; queen anne's lace; 
buttercups. It's only 3:00.  I open
and snap shut my hardback T.S. Eliot,
lie back and take in the zenith.

		*

Yawn. Up on an elbow.  It's turned chilly.
A golden sun sits on the south southwest.
Hmm? Umm. Oh no! Holy shit!
I come to understand, it dawns on me, I see. Fucking idiot!
Spiteful giggles swarm me like no-see-ems.

I rise and stretch, well-rested,
my brainless body feeling fine.
The sky's a beautiful melange
of reds and purples, pinks and orange-yellow,
my celestial booby prize.  I strap on my pack
-- why can't I stop myself smiling,
soon I'll be laughing if I don't
keep an eye on me -- and get ready to go.

_______________________________
*Van Buren Monticello Littleton New Sweden Caribou Presque Isle Mapleton Castle Hill Washburn Wade Westfield Mars Hill Bridgewater Houlton Ludlow New Limerick  Linneus Oakfield Smyrna Mills Island Falls Patten Crystal Sherman Mills Sherman Benedicta Medway Grindstone East Millinocket Millinocket Island Pond Medway South Lincoln Lincoln Lowland Old Town (where they make canoes) Milford Orono Bangor Bolden Brewer Orrington Eddington Clifton Amherst Aurora Ellsworth Trenton Hancock Lamoine. ChatGPT 3.5.