Stairway To Heaven

Dorianne Laux

We’re deep into the seventh hour of the trip,
 the car

 packed with electric guitars and pint-sized


speakers, skateboards and fishing rods,


crumpled copies of Thrasher and Mad.


Ray is riding shotgun—he and Dan switched


at the last stop as agreed. One minute


they’re yelling every cuss word they know


out the open windows, the forbidden syllables


swept beneath the tires of trucks, the next,


they’re asleep and dreaming, bare toes

 twitching, their shaved heads lolling


on the torn upholstery. But now,

 Dan’s reading by flashlight, 
and Ray’s

 looking out at the river, skipping 
through

 stations on the radio when he hears


 “Stairway to Heaven”

and freezes,
 snaps his head around

 to each of us, his mouth
 open

 in the absolute O of exquisite luck.


We listen to the guitar bend out its solo


and everyone’s still. The train

 straining 
up the tracks beside us. The moon


hauling its solitude into the sky.


Ray turns up the volume and closes his eyes, says,


 “Doesn’t this part give you the chills?”


We nod in agreement, then settle again


into our separate worlds. In mine,


I’m beholden to any boy brave enough


to be stunned, to sit still and hushed

 while the grievous tones wash through him

 like dusk.  Stars flicker in the ether—headlights

 fog-mired—cornfields buried in mist.

 The Siskiyou Mountains divide up ahead,

 waiting to swallow us whole.