NPWM, April 30: Overpass

Overpass

A car on the interstate

Slides through the driving rain.

The wipers slap away

At the oncoming neverending deluge

To very little effect.

The road ahead is an impressionist blur.

For just a moment, though,

The water stops

As the car passes

Under the overpass.

In that instant the wipers

Slap away the water,

The road ahead is clear,

And a sudden stunning silence

Replaces the relentless patter. 

These few moments of poetry

This month

Have been like that for me:

Brief periods of

Clear quiet

Under the overpass,

Delicious for their brevity.

Thanks to my friends

For suggesting this endeavor

And to you all

For reading these words.

NPWM, April 29: Night Sounds

Night Sounds

There’s a robin in the maple tree,

Singing in the dark,

Or it might be there’s a blue jay,

Or a cardinal, or a lark.

It could be, from the hemlock,

I hear the chirping of a cricket,

Or perhaps a crooning tomcat

Near the back fence in the thicket.

Well, no, let’s drop the pretense

And forget poetic dreaming:

Because she’s fighting sleep,

I only hear my daughter screaming.

NPWM, April 28: Honesty

Honesty

Despite the steaming and fragrant

cup of coffee to my left,

the gentle mist kissing

the window to my right,

the buttery crumbs of shortbread

dotting my table,

the play of words,

the dance of ideas,

the push and pull of persuasion,

the warming glow of their effort,

and mine,

the love I feel for these people,

the calming sense of calling

that I should be doing this work...

Despite all of these:

Today there is no poetry

in

Grading

Research

Papers.

NPWM, April 27: Stop Sign

Stop Sign

The young man thinks:

It could have been placed anywhere,

This glinting red stop sign,

Perhaps on a corner of Pennsylvania Avenue

Or Broadway or Madison or Park

Or even on some Main Street in any of the

Small towns he’s walked through. 

It stands here instead, just off

The edge of this railroad track that

Bisects two fields in fallow

That run under this highway overpass.

The rails of the tracks seem dull even under

The bright sky and seem only there

To contain the weeds growing up between

Them among the off-kilter cracked ties. 

The young man walking the tracks

Brushes the weeds with his jacket sleeve

And kicks at the little ramp of pea gravel

Near the base of the stop sign.  He looks to

The right and fancies that he sees through the

Field weeds the traces of a narrow road

That used to cross these tracks.  The young man

Sits down on the tracks

Thinking that the sign,

The only spot of color in these fields,

Could be anywhere,

But it’s here,

And that he will for a moment obey it,

Because someone should.

NPWM, April 26: Ready to go

Ready to go

It may be that she thought

the high-tech camera was a weapon

pointed at her face,

or that the postal service

man behind the camera was a monster

or assassin or general meanie,

or that the whole encounter

in the hallway-shaped room

piled high with triplicate forms

and decorated with detailed

maps of our city

was a brief deployment

into an otherworldy stronghold

and that she, the young spy,

was personally assigned to absorb

and process every visible clue,

but whatever the reason:

The little girl’s first

passport photo

shows an expression that is

at once open, honest,

somber, and

faintly bewildered,

as though she knows

already how to pass through

airport security.

NPWM, April 25: A Lesson

Last week

I learned

that our new

chef’s knife

slices through

meat

quite cleanly

and also

that my

right index

finger

is made of

meat.

NPWM, April 24: The scholar takes a whirl

My office chair spins, but

Only when I require it to.  It is

Not a dervish chair, spinning of

Its own accord.

Today while reading (what it was –

I’m not going to tell you) I felt inclined

To spin my chair, perhaps

To mimic the spiraling ascending

Dizzying prose before me (or perhaps

To keep myself awake and alert

To the possibilities of that prose –

regardless, I spun).

And as the prose and the chair took

Me faster and faster through these

Miniature revolutions I noticed,

Even as the growing waviness inside my ears told

Me that physical dizziness might overtake

Me, that my eyes had no trouble,

No trouble at all, moving in their linear

Left to right reading motions, that

They could trace the words on the page

Even as those words and their reader

Spiraled in place through the space of the

Office.  Distracted from the words, I stopped

Spinning for a moment to ponder this

Paradox – that while dizzy I could read in a straight

Line the words that carried the potential to make

Me dizzy.  When I slowed the motion of the chair,

Though, I found very quickly that

My eyes lost focus, that they jittered and shook,

That in essence or in fact they kept spinning

While the book and chair and I slowed to a halt,

So that when the spinning stopped,

I could no longer read.

Quickly I pawed at the floor and spun

The chair once again, and as I picked up

Centrifugal speed and my unsteady head described

Ellipses my eyes slowed and

Once more I could read the words on the page.

The race became, then, this:  can I finish

The chapter I’m reading in motion before

The motion overtakes me and I fall to the floor?

The outcome:  No, I could not.

Perhaps next time I’ll spin more slowly,

Or choose to read better prose,

Or cut out the middleman and

Read from the beginning already

Lying on the floor.