Summer rain beats hard on a hot summer street, turning red brick traffic grimy in another hot afternoon. The westward sky horizon is a dirty lemon yellow but here, now, it is almost night. Brake lights blink a harsh red in this sudden dark. An old grain truck's brakes squeal as the traffic light turns from green to yellow to red. The truck is southbound, out-of-town-bound, bound to the low delta flatlands, flatlands an endless interior sea of soybeans and cotton and dusty, near-forgotten towns.
This rain is heavier now, the sky darker. Oily storm drains fill as the rainwater runs down old French mansard roofs, past the bar on the corner smelling of beer and chicken tenders, past the blues musicians huddled beneath a makeshift cover, past the homeless man yelling at the stained mattresses in the alley. The rainwater is inexorable, always moving, always leaving, and beyond, past the great white refinery tanks and gray grain elevators and a sea of freeway tangles and chain length fences and railroad tracks, the big river rolls. One of the largest rivers in the world, this river, our river, is not exotic or jungle-lined or scented of unknown blossoms but instead massive, mostly tamed, and utilitarian. Barges of corn move north, against the current.
River divides space and time. Hills to the East, Kentucky hills, hills where hot, dry summer oak leaves fall on a simple grave, a mandolin player's grave, a grave in Rosine. River divides space and time, hills to the West, rough, marbly country hills stained in rock and darkness. Those western hills still beckon. There is hope in following the sun's setting path, even today, even amid an age of irony and deconstruction, an age all but without hope.
Between those dark ridges, I stand amid great swathes of black dirt. The delta space between, where names like "Missouri," or "Illinois," or "Kentucky" contradict space or time or even idea. "Little Egypt" they called it once, and that name fits the soul better. Little Egypt, sun over river, sun over soil, and one great pyramid, shining yellow in the sun. Frost will tinge this black earth all too soon but here in this strange in between, the path of the chariot calls, the path between the two towers, the path of the innocent. I was innocent once and perhaps will be again. Here there are unspoken promises, forever in the asking. Here there is Egypt and the Promised Land, the sacred and the profane, even as old white paint peels from memory.
The compass points are all here and I stand at my center of universe. We only know our own perspective of things, but from where I stand I feel more than see the idea of freedom and hope and soul, all lost in the dust and the mud and the glinting last sunlight of day before dark, wet autumn clouds obscure the view and the breeze turns from summer to winter.
The old grain truck rumbles through this Little-Egypt-in-between, far from the grimy, magical soul of the city. Here, in the fields there are eons of wonder, here, something strange and fey and magical is dancing in the night and the earth and in the stars. The hills are dark, save for flickering electronic light, and we stare mindlessly at our screens, never looking away, never remembering that which echoes from above and from below, always, ever, again, and again.
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