Philosophy

By Laura Bandy

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In Illinois, we say town names

a certain kind of way, especially

 

downstate, which references all

the vast blob south of Chicago.

 

At the bottom-most point, just

up from Kentucky, there’s Kay-

 

row for Cairo. And don’t forget

Virsails, smack dab in the center,

 

directly west of my heart’s choice,

Athe-inns, our own philosophical

 

hub. Plato may be long gone, but

so what? As the poets say, doesn’t

 

everything die at last, and too soon?

And, further, what more wisdom

 

do you need beyond the girl who

stops to help me on some back

 

country road, my car overheated

and smoking, maybe one errant

 

tossed cigarette away from total

conflagration, and she pulls up

 

behind me in a purple Capri,

waiting a respectful few moments

 

before approaching my window

which I roll down hopelessly while

 

crying in wet, desperate honks, so

sure I won’t be able to afford fixing

 

whatever might be wrong, so she

sighs and pulls a white cotton

 

handkerchief from her pocket,

this girl! No more than twenty

 

I’d guess, and hands it over

with eyes politely averted,

 

staring at some point over

her sunburnt shoulder, at

 

the town perhaps that I’m trying

to reach, my hometown in fact,

 

once host to Lincoln and Douglas

Turner and Stone, all those “great”

 

white men of yore who named the

place for Andrew Jackson, owner of

 

the enslaved, but now known by another

tag due to all the meth being cooked

 

in our barns, Actionville, they say

and this girl, long-limbed, nut brown

 

curls pulled back in a practical pony,

hearing that my sobs have subsided,

 

sunk to a series of shuddering gulps,

raps my hood smartly and smiles.

 

“Pop it,” she says, “I’ve got water

in my car, we’ll have you straight

 

in no time.” Then she tilts her chin

at the sun, just beginning its descent

 

over tall rows of corn stretching

for miles, all the way, in fact, to those

 

exotic locales boasting palaces, gardens,

mosques and temples, the Parthenon

 

even, enduring symbol of democracy

and civilization, “Should be a pretty one

 

tonight,” she says, and I follow her gaze

to a point low in the sky where vermillion

 

and amber washes of light splash the canvas,

dazingly beautiful, even in this forsaken place.

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