Death Like A Finger Poem by MARINA GIPPS

With photographs of an abandoned hotel in the mountains
where the dirt roads were speaking 'come follow'.
This was no ordinary road my shaman friend knew,
this was the road of the blue truck travelling
to the ruins beyond the heliotropes.
In the mountains past the cottonwood clouds,
with the light behind them, wildflowers so high,
In the mountains where the blue truck pulled
to the side of the road where no police could interrupt
our quiet watch for spirits of gold diggers
the indians saw and were thought crazy.
'Did you see it? ' i asked, 'did you see
something run that way? '
'South is death, ' the shaman told me, pointing-
'Was it a blonde boy? ' 'Yes, he ran from tree to tree.
How'd he get so high up? '

With the good demons upset in me, we drove a little further
past some ol' forty mobiles piled up on each other
like a chain of past lives or a reaction to apathy.
Shaman got out for an old archaeologist's look.

He reminded me of the flowers growing
in those car hoods where bullet holes
cut through all the tin and the flowers cut through
the beginning of a happy ending-
How i almost walked across the cars of death as i took
a photograph to commemorate them.
Shaman wiped the dust off his shoulders,
wishing himself in a desert when i told him-
Charlie, let's leave.

Driving away, a skull and crossbones marked our exit,
the mountains with the light behind them.
'Look at the view behind you in the rearview mirror, ' he said,
'My friend, if you dream about it, this is the place
where you'll never return.'