Notes from the Northern Lights Truckstop and Motel

I strike the dinger for a room, a book, and a beer.
For eleven days, I’ve been carrying my silver self
on my back. I think of your question (little else),
What is the difference between a rational fear
and an unfounded one? So I had to leave polar fires
oxidizing. Listen, I buried my camera in heather soot.
Perhaps I am tarnishing; still I play and then put
the cloth to my metal. My dear, the trills I desire
are simply to still my brain’s incessant, bleak
arpeggios. Polish does not suffice and of course
you washed clear. I tire of this lens-grainy sight:
the film that shows only the grimace of ignited
trees, withered and weathered. I request its source
stay unvoiced—your limbs cast the senses, oblique.