Cadillac Ranch by Mark Cole

Cadillac Ranch By Mark Cole

The Ten

Just a-gleaming in the sun and a-howling at the moon

Resolute

Stark

Brittle

Honest

Weird

Nude

They just lean

In formation

Into the wind

Not exactly defiant

But certainly not compliant

A bit lonely, their glory faded, but with the patina of nostalgia, a whiff of post-war abundance and optimism

Photo by Madeline Frost

Before them

The Comanches bivouacked, marauded and danced

The ranchers followed and tarried a bit longer, fencing and grazing

Then farmers seeded and harvested, speculators gambled and railroads bullied

Then came Armageddon, the arid paint-peeling, suffocating dust of the 1930s

Like all the other nomads that came and went before them, the Ten are neither at home nor out of place

Like a Route 66 gas station and our great grandparents

They too will slowly dissolve into the background  

Obscured by the perpetual motion of endless, gritty wind

But for now, they continue with their business

Not noticing you, but allowing you to notice them

Tough, but not invulnerable

Resilient, but hardly immortal

***

Weeds tumble and bounce

Coffee cools

Rust sets in

Tears fall and dry

Tailfins disappear

So many Baptists and so many others

Gather here together to paint, to hope and to dream and keep moving with the wind

They also stop by to paint

to recall

and to accept

And hold their heads high like the Cadillacs