Subconscious Ode to Ponce de Leon
by DL Pravda
Beyond sand mines and pine farm geometry, we ride through the dune forest on the Chowan River in search of serenity. Pass a cut crew, a hardhat dude in a machine with giant fangs that pulls entire trees and piles them like toothpicks. Low swamp below the soft sand road. Chute to the river. Park and pull up zipper and hood. Not sure we can reach beyond the mudbog trail. We scout each step, hop from witches’ knees to clumps of grass, dodge briers and branches and puddles with fake floors. About to surrender, Keith spots a half-buried bottle, balances on logs and roots and pulls a glass Coke, its rusty twist top still aboard. Avoid vine clotheslines. Avoid scumholes and skulls of kills by fox or coyote. Avoid gusts of cruel wind. Dirty determination gives us a ten-foot cliff to the river and a legless bench nailed between trees. We sit and sip and smoke and trip on the beauty of isolation. Cypress line the banks like long crooked teeth. The water surface smooth. Mudflower and grass and moss, the fabric of the shoreline forest seems sweet enough for sleep. Pink maple flower starts to pop. Nothing can stop the spring. Like the river. Like the tide. A redtail rests high in a white oak under cloak of proud clouds and paucity of sound. How come no one knows about this? How come we assume there is nothing left to explore? The river gives no answer. Clean air doesn’t care. My friend and I sigh at the same / time to move on. Down the cream road. The hills and curves of curiosity. Around the next turn may be our youth. Maybe there’s another spot to find a bald eagle flying by or treasure dumped behind by fools or final breaths. Maybe nothing but views and miles traveled off beaten highways. Maybe a nose whistle and The Wind Cries Mary on the stereo and the night’s first star.
Author of the award-winning book Normal They Napalm the Cottonfields, DL Pravda appeared on the Library of Congress podcast ‘The Poet and the Poem’ with Maryland laureate Grace Cavalieri in 2023. Recent poems appear in Sand Hills Literary Review, KAKALAK, Roanoke Review and Mid-Atlantic Review, and Pravda teaches at Norfolk State University.
Bus in the Woods
Not far from where Guitar Mark and I got chased by shotguns for accidental trespassing, I find a lost house with a yard of old cars. I pull over, pass granite gravestones by the ditch. First thing I seek: a vehicle new enough to run, an updated license plate, smoke from the cinderblock chimney, anything to show presence. Nothing. The mad March wind bites. Among ivied pines and hollow sycamores and one monster magnolia, I photo a dusky blue Jeep J-4000 without wheels or tailgate. An Olds Cutlass covered in honeysuckle and leaves. An Eagle 370 bowrider, its hull underground, surrounded by a jail of young trees. A yellow Volkswagen Rabbit, engine torn out. Way deep back, I find a bus, dark green, tan stripe, white roof. I circle and shoot her hippie curves and rusted mag wheels. Its door half-open, I consider a corpse inside. Can’t resist. I climb the stairs into a former life. Now piled with clutter somehow like a stagnant pond. Floor of cardboard boxes and bags and brown newspapers. Faded blue metal barrels. A washer. A sunroof with vines growing down. Two toms and a bass, dusty glitter-gold, from a drumset. A guitar with its fretboard separated. Old frames. And a tall, ornate trophy with a reaching angel on top. I see a wreck but flashback to a once-happy scene. Maybe nomads or a traveling band. I sense a rolling party from the days we still dream about: the live-and-let-live freedom of not too long ago, the kind you had to grab, to dare, to leap into the belief the cops will leave you alone unless some crazy shit went down. I stop shooting, lost in my head. Mark’s passed on. The band’s broken up. Deep breath, I return to today. Camera clicks, I keep chasing inspiration down riffs and roads. Maybe when I get home, I’ll write a song about this land and this bus and vans and trucks that carry us on to dawn and coffee and eggs and biscuits and fruit not quite ripe.