Americana

Travels in a strange land...

We start in Australia and my old

home town with this once

upon a time sunrise -

now a fading

sunset

Memory wrapped, ghost dust gathered moth

balled, unhomed, once

bright, shiny now

become mono

chromed

But it gave me a thirst for other places

just like that so, years later,

out along this aching

fading road in

far Nevada

The Warm Springs Bar & Cafe -

population: 4 Bighorn Sheep

(look closely centre left) -

plus rocks and

crumbling

hills.

Then to Currant, crouched at a crossroads - Grand

Army of the Republic Highway

marching on beyond to

something like

nowhere from

some place

somewhere

else.

We paused there in the abandoned lot, breathing bone

dry air then left the building far behind

because driveway service

in Currant, Nevada,

currently

just is

not.

Even though the next gas is

111 miles further on down

an otherwise

uninhabited

road.

For this was in….

The America Theatre - Caspar Wyoming

Where anything can happen and sometimes feels

as if it all already has. Where even today

in Death Valley Junction

yesterday looks

like this

And here in Goldfield another garage lies waiting

Under a faded sky and the heart pulses,

travelling, the eye sees, the mind

pauses, knowing all

things ultimately

end - even

driveway

service.

Then last in Shoshoni Wyoming, the light lending substance, the day sending…

Two fresh cups of emptiness -

(waiting inside) -

delicious

just for

us

Outside, this old

old Oldsmobile

lies rusting in

in the sun -

stilled.

And we stand there wondering, imagining what

this world of ours will one day become

and if, eventually, the Shoshone

themselves will get the

very last of words -

the Ghost Dance

prophecy finally

fulfilled.

Notes:

Version on Substack has one extra Photo (I hit the email size limit). All photos by me.

The Ghost Dance: In the late 19th century, as the invasion and devastation of First Nation lands and peoples reached a peak across the Western USA, the spiritual leader and shaman, Wovoka, of the Northern Paiute nation, received a vision during a solar eclipse.

Wovoka taught the “Ghost Dance” - a version of traditional Circle Dance ceremony - and his followers believed that proper practice of the ceremony would restore balance to the world. The dead would be reunited with the living, and would help fight the invaders. The Europeans and all their works would be banished from the land and the great buffalo herds would return.

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/american-west/a/ghost-dance-and-wounded-knee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance

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