Two Poems by Tim Moder

Driving Home Across The Mackinac Bridge, Tired, Early Morning June 12, 2012
(after seeing Radiohead and Caribou in Chicago and Detroit)

I can’t dream when I’m not amazed. Hypnotic signals stretch the
skies feeling for a tower. Helpless in the driver seat I don’t sleep.

Today I thought I saw a bird’s nest in the trees, hanging, made
of grasses, threaded twigs and leaves. It turned out to be a giant
spider web that mulched abandoned missives collected by the wind.
It waited, gigantic, a hairy catcher’s mitt, for unaware ideas to arrive.

I can always be amazed while driving. I can hear them in the back
sleeping. Friends, and friends of friends, and family. When we were
kids, we dreamed of being out of control, leaving when we heard the
call, sworn to the moon as secret celebrants. I wait to hear the night.

I suppose the light of the moon is just reflection. I see it in the sky,
and in front of me on the mirror of two great lakes. I can’t tell
which isn’t real. I wait with the wind to liberate pinned places from
the names we printed in bold letters on unfolded wrinkled maps.

*

Low Gas Salton Sea, October 3, 2018
(on the way to Phoenix to see The Mystic Valley Band and Phoebe Bridgers)

You are playing Hot Fuss on the stereo.

The needle moves idly across the GPS.

I say “I’ll get the next gas.”

We have a quarter tank.

From the back seat I could see
boarded up/pulled up/dug up stations,
each with a listing on the internet.

Unplugged mid-day warning signs.

Leisure moved on. Commerce moved on.

I could see an empty cigarette machine
dials and grips play it like foosball.

An empty yard with an Astro-turf veranda,
bumpy with iridescent happiness.

An empty bucket of rain water
dripping with Osprey feathers.

I’ve been reading the diary of a Buddhist
Monk, written while visiting a Shinto shrine.

In this pure land are many mansions,
most of them abandoned.

Sand is wind-embraced along the naked highway.

I don’t mind being a passenger today
as the car comes to an inevitable rolling
stop near Desert Center

I say “I’ll get the next gas.”

*

Tim Moder is a poet living in northern Wisconsin. His poems have appeared in Native Skin, River Mouth Review, Free State Review, Coachella Review, and others. He is the author of the chapbooks All true Heavens (Alien Buddha Press 2022) and American Parade Routes (Seven Kitchens 2023) He is a member of The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.