by Pa Rock
High Flyer
This afternoon finds me in the Kansas City area resting up for a flight to Oregon tomorrow where I will spend the better part of the week having fun with grandkids. I have written about this before, but the flight to Oregon basically covers the same path that hearty American pioneers followed in the 18th century as they made their way from Independence, Missouri (roughly Kansas City) to the Willamette Valley (roughly the Portland/Salem area of Oregon). The flight from KC International to Portland will take about four hours, whereas the pioneer wagon trains struggled to complete the trip between the time one winter ended and the next began.
And all of that puts me in mind of the first - and one of the few - computer games that I ever played: The Oregon Trail, a travel adventure in which players assumed the roles of pioneers and had to make the perilous journey while encountering many obstacles along the way. Players were confronted with issues like what part of their money to spend on food, clothing, supplies, ammunition, and a whole host of items, while never knowing when Indians or the forces of nature would throw their careful planning out of whack. For someone like me who loved history, the game was almost hypnotic.
Today's poem, "Oregon Trail" by Nate Marshall slides across time and space to touch on the history of pioneer hardships as well as early computer games - all the while still traversing essentially the same rugged route. The poet does a masterful job of tying divergent strands of thought into a meaningful braid of history.
Meanwhile Pa Rock will ponder whether he has stuffed all that he will need for the coming week into his one checked bag - and whether that bag will arrive at the same airport as he does. Same destination, different concerns.
Oregon Trail
by Nate Marshall
High Flyer
This afternoon finds me in the Kansas City area resting up for a flight to Oregon tomorrow where I will spend the better part of the week having fun with grandkids. I have written about this before, but the flight to Oregon basically covers the same path that hearty American pioneers followed in the 18th century as they made their way from Independence, Missouri (roughly Kansas City) to the Willamette Valley (roughly the Portland/Salem area of Oregon). The flight from KC International to Portland will take about four hours, whereas the pioneer wagon trains struggled to complete the trip between the time one winter ended and the next began.
And all of that puts me in mind of the first - and one of the few - computer games that I ever played: The Oregon Trail, a travel adventure in which players assumed the roles of pioneers and had to make the perilous journey while encountering many obstacles along the way. Players were confronted with issues like what part of their money to spend on food, clothing, supplies, ammunition, and a whole host of items, while never knowing when Indians or the forces of nature would throw their careful planning out of whack. For someone like me who loved history, the game was almost hypnotic.
Today's poem, "Oregon Trail" by Nate Marshall slides across time and space to touch on the history of pioneer hardships as well as early computer games - all the while still traversing essentially the same rugged route. The poet does a masterful job of tying divergent strands of thought into a meaningful braid of history.
Meanwhile Pa Rock will ponder whether he has stuffed all that he will need for the coming week into his one checked bag - and whether that bag will arrive at the same airport as he does. Same destination, different concerns.
Oregon Trail
by Nate Marshall
my first venture west was in Windows 98
or Independence, Missouri. class in the computer lab
& we were supposed to be playing some typing game
or another. the one i remember had a haunted theme.
ghosts instructing us on the finer points of where
to put our fingers. these were the last days
before keyboards as appendage, when typing
was not nature. i should’ve been letting an apparition
coach me through QWERTY but rather
i was at the general store deciding between ammo & axles,
considering the merits of being a banker or carpenter.
too young to know what profession
would get me to the Willamette Valley
in the space of a 40-minute period.
i aimed my rifle with the arrow keys, tapped the space
bar with a prayer for meat to haul back to the wagon.
this game came difficult as breathing underwater after
trying to ford a river.
i was no good at survival.
somebody always fell ill or out into the river.
each new day scurvy or a raid was the fate of a character
named for my crush or my baby sister.
this loss i know, how to measure what it means
to die premature before a school period ends.
i can’t understand the game coming to a late end.
an elderly daughter grieving her elderly mother.
reading the expansive obit in a suburban
Detroit church is a confusing newness.
when the old do the thing the world expects
i retreat into my former self. focus on beating
video games I’ve always sucked at, brush up
on Chicago Bulls history, re-memorize
the Backstreet Boys catalog, push
away whatever woman is foolhardy enough
to be on any road with me. i pioneer my way away
from all the known world. i look at homicide rates
& wish we all expired the way i know best. i pray
for a senseless, poetic departure. i pray for my family
to not be around to miss me while i’m still here.
i want a short obituary, a life brief & unfulfilled,
the introductory melody before a beat’s crescendo into song,
the game over somewhere in the Great Plains.
i want to spare my descendants the confusion
of watching a flame flicker slow. keep them from being
at a funeral thumbing the faded family pictures like worn keys,
observing the journey done, the game won, the west
conquered. 
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