STEVE GOODYEAR

May 2008

Steve Goodyear was born during Indian Summer, 1953 in the land of ten thousand lakes, where the Mississippi, Minnesota and St Croix Rivers are each small enough for a young boy to hop over. Surrounded by small towns with names like Elk River, Duluth, Shakopee and Red Wing, Steve naturally absorbed the roots and patina of vintage, rural America. Passing through the wheat fields of Kansas, he woke up one day in Southern California with a pencil in hand and a backlog of memories and stories that begged to be written. Steve's images, insights and influences reach from the lonely calm and seclusion of a backwood cabin in Otis Junction, Oregon to the surge of humanity swirling through the markets and streets of downtown LA.

REDONDO PIER 1963

The muffled clang of a dull brass bell
strangled in moss,
the haunted moan of a barge horn, wailing
its way back home
through fog
and a barnacled buoy sway
like drunks in the harbor.

By first light, more old men than gulls lean
into the wind,
stand shoulder to shoulder with eyes
sunk deeper than anchors,
conjuring ghosts of old ships,
sailors and fishermen.

Strangers with live bait,
hung over bent barbed hooks,
surrounded by fresh fish dying in buckets,
cup cold stiff fingers in calloused hands
they wrap like ovens around warm breath,
thaw well-worn memories of islands and youth,
fill taut white sails with currents of tropical air,
breathe life into lapis and cloud-streaked skies,
into palm-treed beaches and earth-toned women
they once left,
smiling and waving,

imagine them
still there,
fading

like laughter and music from far
off shore,
like a wake from a stern,
like morning,
their old tattoos
and fog.

---------------------------

THE DEPOT

Stirring in a half-sleep,
blending with a sigh,
a lazy midnight whistle, pouring
like molasses from a train
surrounds me,

reaches through the dark and spreads
its cotton-candied fingers
like a fog, around my world.

A far-off engine snores
through tangled roadside weeds
and leaves on trees
by farms and homes on hills
and sometimes, grazing cows.
It slips past empty, spurs
a junkyard, barking dogs and idle factories.

A winding ribbon follows,
whipped up in a breeze
a thousand boxcars long,

a red caboose beneath a full moon, pregnant
with a million dreams
of passengers and lovers
circus clowns and children
feeding elephants and tigers
licking paws and whiskers
lying in a cage on yellow straw,

while drifting just a few degrees
above the tops of trees,
a ripple in a silver stream of clouds
reflecting like the steam of days gone by
illuminates the sky
in streaks of laughter.

We dance in the wake
like two young sparks.
We kiss like movie stars
on a giant screen.

And sometimes we communicate
like two trains
rushing through a tunnel,
taking turns at talking,
shouting, "Watch out
here I come"
and sometimes
at the depot, lying
side by side and half-asleep,
we sigh, like engines,
almost touching, drenched
in a hiss of steam.