Out Past the Nowhere Café
Soon it comes back to you, this loneliest road
rhythm following a Nevada moon out of the troughs
of the great ghost waves, beyond the pinyon summits,
and down the far side of range after range, where there
is always another valley—greasewood, saltbush, alkali—
and one less radio station. It takes longer to get nowhere
than it used to. You see what looks like the glow of a small
town over the rise, and you wonder if it’s real or maybe
some coffeed-up apparition, like that hitchhiking shadow
a few miles back. You round a bend and there lies a dying
town. Home of the Nowhere Café. Go slow. The café
is easy to pass—they the shut the lights off years ago.
Out back, where the truckers used to park, you follow
a road running south between the ranges they call Shoshone
and Toiyabe. So close to nowhere now you’ve gone giddy.
You hear yourself chanting: Shoshone, Toiyabe, Shoshone, Toiyabe.
You take the first two track turn, follow it out to the end,
shut the lights off, shut the engine off, and sit tight till
it stops ticking. Then you walk out over this desert
hardpan, wait for the first falling star, and you hear
nothing, not even a lick of wind. Finally you are nowhere.
And you say the only words you have left to say:
Empty me, that I might be whole again.
