Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DRIVING INTO LARAMIE, by JAMES GALVIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DRIVING INTO LARAMIE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Out here sheer force of sky bearing down
Last Line: That god is impressed above all by defiance
Subject(s): Death; Driving & Drivers; Oregon; Religion; Dead, The; Theology


Out here sheer force of sky bearing down
Could crush the town to dust and hand it back.

So it lies low in cringing boxiness
And draws back, as if it didn't know them,
From its own absurdly wide streets,
Which are stupid promises
Where nothing lingers the wind would linger over.

The steeple of the Episcopal church
And the obsolete smokestack at Monolith Portland
Insult the sunshot blue above the leveled town,
The one a washed-out dream prosperity woke from,

The other, in this whereabouts, a reflection in the sky
Of the hard thorn in every citizen,
His just belief
That God is impressed above all by defiance.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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