Three Poems from a Day on The Road
Vignettes of the Miles
Uncle Josh
“Uncle Josh” came by to play, forgot he was supposed to behave and that it might be good to be a calming influence so late in the evening
(blame it on his cat shirt)
There were dolls and a dinosaur mask
“I’m a hipster-saurus! Rarrrr!”
Bears! Roar!
Bulls!
Pawed the ground
lowered his head
Lil’ buddy pawed the ground
Uncle Josh stayed still
Lil’ buddy did not
With a sudden lunge and…
bounce
And then
ran a-crying to mama
Unarticulated sadness at
the unfairness of inertia
Pointing at Uncle Josh’s hard head
The hard head was mortified
“I’m so sorry - I swear I didn’t move forward.”
Soon the fun continued
toy trains he hadn’t seen in thirty three years
A meta memory of being the kid and the adult and here and in the past all at once
rolling down a track
Finally, the great burden of any grownup
Ticked and tocked on the wall
And laced his shoes
“See you next time, kids”
Back to the highway and a hazy evening sinking into frozen yogurt colors
Bigger than any sophisticated idea
Old Roads
Old roads
traveled without thinking
etched into autopilot
Old neighborhoods
Crumbling, growing
Like toys in the attic hauled down on a rainy day
“Hey, I remember this one!”
But there’s a glint in the bear’s eye
And the rabbit has electronic ears
I remember why I left
So I put them back in the box, and the trunk back in the attic
But not before I see an old friend
Sit in the shade on a stump
two frogs in a river
“Ribbit!!
“Hello!”
Splash
Back in to the current
On it flows, out to the sea.
Joe
Gas station colors at night
and
Decaf coffee
and airsoft guns have an orange plastic ring
that means “fake”
This is not.
Dodge the weirdos
And they dodge me
“Best coffee on the Interstate”
I think they mixed up the brew and filled up with
the green diesel hose
That sits quietly coiled in an island of light
Cetane 40, Columbian blend
Black as the asphalt of I-95 south (“next right, you’ll be home just after midnight”)
Lightened with the single dash line of a plastic French vanilla
I pay for the fuel and leave, the lonely trucker still chewing slowly
at the table next to the window
A seventy mile per hour wind roars the scent of longleaf pine and a June night
fills the car
Bonus points for sailing in the left lane
On the long way home.
YESSSSS