Poem 21 - In a U-Haul North of Damascus

Here’s a poem about pain and the possibility of redemption. On the road to Damascus, of course, is where the persecutor of Christians, Saul, was blinded, given a faith in Christ, and rose redeemed as Paul, the pillar of the first church. Damascus, here, refers to Damascus, Georgia, population 254, the place where our poet (or his character) ponders the chance of a new beginning.

In a U-Haul North of Damascus

David Bottoms

1

Lord, what are the sins

I have tried to leave behind me? The bad checks,

the workless days, the scotch bottles thrown across the

fence

and into the woods, the cruelty of silence,

the cruelty of lies, the jealousy,

the indifference?

What are those on the scale of sin

or failure

that they should follow me through the streets of

                Columbus,

the moon-streaked fields between Benevolence

and Cuthbert where dwarfed cotton sparkles like pearls

on the shoulders of the road. What are these

that they should find me half-lost,

sick and sleepless

behind the wheel of this U-Haul truck parked in a field

                on Georgia 45

a few miles north of Damascus,

some makeshift rest stop for eighteen wheelers

where the long white arms of oaks slap across the trailers

and headlights glare all night through a wall of pines?

2

What was I thinking, Lord?

That for once I’d be in the driver’s seat, a firm grip on

                direction?

So the jon boat muscled up the ramp,

the Johnson outboard, the bent frame of the wrecked

                Harley

chained for so long to the back fence,

the scarred desk, the bookcases and books,

the mattress and box springs,

a broken turntable, a Pioneer amp, a pair

of three-way speakers, everything mine

I intended to keep. Everything else abandon.

But on the road from one state

to another, what is left behind nags back through

                distance,

a last word rising to a scream, a salad bowl

shattering against a kitchen cabinet, china barbs

spiking my heal, blood trailed across the cream linoleum

like the bedsheet that morning long ago

just before I watched the future miscarried.

Jesus, could the irony be

that suffering forms a stronger bond than love?

3

Now the sun

streaks the windshield with yellow and orange, heavy

                beads

of light drawing highways in the dew-cover.

I roll down the window and breathe the pine-air,

the after-scent of rain, and the far-off smell

of asphalt and diesel fumes.

But mostly pine and rain

as though the world really could be clean again.

Somewhere behind me,

miles behind me on a two-lane that streaks across

west Georgia, light is falling

through the windows of my half-empty house.

Lord, why am I thinking about this? And why should I

                care

so long after everything has fallen

to pain that the woman sleeping there should be sleeping

alone?

Could I be just another sinner who needs to be blinded

before I can see? Lord, is it possible to fall

toward grace? Could I be moved

to believe in new beginnings? Could I be moved?