On the Day of my Cousin's Confirmation
by Julia Remick
I take the lonely way from the church,
keep up with the river on Ransom Boulevard
fringed with curly strips of tires.
When we were small enough to sit on armrests,
this way used to send Lee and I screaming every time
under the radio to hug the stick shift,
to feel the rumbling heat of the transmission
as my aunt kneed our shoulders,
explained that we'd bounce more on the floor.
Campbell's Ledge hangs unsteadily in my windshield,
wedged into a mountain or emerging like a sculpture
from formless untouched trees.
Miles climbed, peddled, gassed to the top and years had diminished
my family's ghost tales of General Campbell's flight from the savages.
I'd revealed to Lee last summer on one way up, he on the cooler,
the dusk-illuminated river bouncing in the rearview mirror,
that our family's lazy inflections
had instilled images of men in mid-fall on the swollen backs
of camels that would dot the river with tiny furry islands.
I squint at silhouettes of climbers or trees on the face
waving me up. My hand grounds the coffee cup steady
on the dashboard the entire boulevard home
and I think tonight of how I held down Lee kneeling and greasy
on the altar until he found a name.