W I D E O P E N S P A C E S
pull wandering eyes to possibilities
more expansive, more accepting
of greater distances, as if taking
your car to the next town over
were no different than running
downtown for your errands.
Islands—physical, urban, mental—
inhibit, implode possibilities, put
'too far' signs on near horizons,
as if traveling to city's center
might entice disastrous demons
to steal rational thought from
your well-balanced senses.
"Why would you want to see
Pittsburgh?" asked my friend,
lifelong Philadelphian—
"Because I've never seen it,"
my response—"I've never seen
it either!"—he claimed fifty years.
Her father-in-law's village
nestled near Windermere
in England's Lake District.
He complained he hadn't
seen his best friend in years.
"But why?" she asked, "he
only lives one village
over."—"It's too far."—
"It's only five miles away!"
High school athletes from
Havre, Montana; Colville,
Washington; Priest River,
Idaho; any small, one-school-
fits-all center for everything
educational, all claim one
commonality: their parents
think of distance in units of
time not distance, add one
dose of necessity to the mix,
stir, and pour their lives into
driving, driving, driving—
etching mental maps on
synapses stretched to "yes"
84/100
100 poems in 100 days
I like what you did with this poem and it got me thinking (many of your poems do that). Where I live in a suburb of Sacramento, it’s common for me to say I live “30 minutes from everything.” Its mostly true and I’ve resigned myself to driving, but when I moved here I had many friends tell me I “moved too far away” as if I’ve moved to another state. For some a car ride for 30 minutes is far, for me, it’s a daily trip. It’s all about perspective. Also, how wild is it that you can drive five minutes in any direction within the city and it’s completely different?
That’s it exactly! One thing I was trying to do but I feel I failed is to translate this non-verbal thought in my head about how one actually envisions their physical world. If I were a cartoonist, your friends would have a five-mile limit marked “Here’s Where Too Far Begins”. I spent quite a few chunks of my early life in Montana, attending college, visiting friends. That’s where I first encountered this.