Clay Matthews
T o u r i s m
I forged my father’s signature on the page
and sent it back into the machine hoping
that this morning we could lay down our other
preoccupations and walk out and eat breakfast
on the grass. From one side of the town and then
another I hear the business of factories carrying
out the business of men which is to be loud
in the hopes of being useful, but I want to say
they have covered Bentham up with the dark blanket
long ago. So I am taking my time. The neighbor
is underneath this beautiful old Fairlane
willed to him by his grandmother-in-law and I
pretend not to hear him cursing because he has
granted the same courtesy to me. I want to drive
away from everything. I want to tour the un-toured
America. And on television they’ve been playing
these commercials for the state in which I currently
reside (sometimes happiness, sometimes Oklahoma,
sometimes a nether region in between). And just last
week I sat alone in a hotel room in the city rubbing
the dog’s back and watching a channel devoted
to local travel, and I thought the television was
becoming another window into our own backyard,
but when I went to the window it was nothing like
what I was watching on t.v. And all these states
with their mottos. I hail from Missouri, the Show-Me-
State, and brother that’s not exactly true because we
have faith in so many unseen things. But I want to show you
what was outside the window, the real window, because
the television would turn everything into an adventure,
or some fantasy of the west, but outside the hotel
window there is a real adventure—a small home nestled
on one acre in the middle of the city, a little shed,
a horse trailer, a truck up on blocks and a porch looking
out to the west. Adventure is trying to hang on
to what the world would take away from you one
document after another, your name on the dotted line,
your name on the line, your name here, and here again
beside the X. In the name of my own name, I pray.
What of the world. What have I not seen that I still
feel I need to see. I’ve got this idea of micro-travel,
of covering every square inch within one block of land
before moving on to the next. Because I’m beginning
to think that there is something right here to be found.
You know on the television it even appears that way,
as if the ground that you stand on is valuable,
unknown, mythic. I want to take my shoes off
and throw them into the wind. Because my feet could use
a little change in the weather, and my body
could stand to walk in an attempt to believe
that the land on which it is walking is its own, wholly
and holy and a thousand other beautiful adjectives.
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