Some poetry lately, placed in order of most to least favored (by me).
Escape
Gasoline, propel me
Away from here at a high rate of speed
We’ve dredged you to burn you
For your torture to take us anywhere but here
Take me, then
To where rubber trees feed on the infinite roads of America
Where the billboards beat by
Endlessly selling a better life
Little explosions of freedom under the hood unseen,
hide the violence of my escape
Take me past the landfills
Where the goods of the rich and poor alike meet the same decay
Where the armchairs from Restoration Hardware
Comfortably greet oblivion alongside those from Ikea
And your grandaddy’s old rocker
Take me across America’s parched deserts
High into its mountains
Beneath its skies, its spacious skies
God, let this tailpipe offering be your signal
To shed your grace on me
Even in the form of acid rain,
to my windshield wipers, it’s all the same
Gasoline
Busy street|
A thousand cars a day or more
must drive by my house
I hear them from my living room
They go by with a whoosh
almost like a gust of wind
Sometimes I hear a car stereo
A low rumble of bass
causes some part of a vehicle to
vibrate its annoyance
And every once in a while, an ambulance
A honk from a disgruntled driver
But in the evenings
as traffic calms
you can close your eyes
Relax as the interval of the whoosh expands
Close your eyes and wait for the wheels
the displaced air
it’s almost like breathing
Early autumn, lakeside in Northern Minnesota
In the fall when the leaves turn and loosen their grip
the wind takes them
a breeze or a gust at a time
By a lakeside in Northern Minnesota
The hearts of golden aspens
drift to the water’s edge
those early departers scatter to the ground
sink like wishful coins into the lakebed
fade into the muck
Trees along the nearby trails sway and creak
lean against each other like drunken pals late in the night
until someday one falls down
while the other waits its turn
And when the wind picks up suddenly
sometimes it feels to me like the end
and sometimes it feels like the beginning
But of course, it is both
Viola
Some days are endless
until one day is not
and that day is then
suddenly too soon
washed away
mopped up
dried out
kicked down the stairs
into the darkness
viola
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