Poems

Over twenty years ago, I wrote this poem while living in Dublin, Ireland.  This imagined scenario was part of the inspiration for my current trip:

Cross Country

Imagine this

prairie landscape.  Eight hundred miles

of nothing.  Eight hundred

miles.  Another hour and a half

to go.  Imagine something

thunking

in the engine.  A soft sound,

a thunking, in the blackness and frost,

ninety miles an hour through

a half day of nothing, nothing at all,

more nothing.  Imagine

slowing, stopping, in the middle

of an endless, black, frosty

nothing, imagine standing at three a.m.

on the unbroken line, looking up,

staring at a sea-black sky

thick with stars.  Staring.

Staring.  Imagine starting to spin.


Two or three graffitists wrote out Robert Frost's 'The Road Less Traveled' under a bridge traversing the Spokane River in Spokane, Washington:

I saw this poem in a shop window - yoga center - in Santa Barbara, California: