Journeys Within Journeys
Marcia Bost
I set myself a task
To wile away the hours:
Look deeply at the landscape
Through which I speed.
Two towering trees
Darkly frame a power line –
A parenthesis.
Only an English teacher would
Naturally punctuate nature –
When did I get lost?
A glooming cloud
Like meringue whipped into peaks,
Overwhelms the land.
Chattahoochee Bridge, long and narrow,
As dangerous as those
Building in my mind –
What if I am swept away
By ideas?
Dead, white bones, a corpse,
A cut over grove of trees –
Their headstone Walmart.
Not another journey!
I’d rather have the covers
Pulled over my head –
Why have I split my world in half?
A smudged square of moon,
A child’s drawing rejected
Crumpled by inky clouds.
Tell me again,
Why am I climbing this mountain
With the freight of others’ expectations?
Bradford pears, unplanted,
Along a broad boulevard,
Blooming sideways.
Wahoo, Sargent, Banning –
Lights waiting in windows
For someone else –
How many miles to home?
Queen Anne’s lace:
Elegant weed draped carelessly
On the road’s shoulders.
There’s just me;
The burning stars, tiger bright,
With radiance of vanished galaxies;
The clash of Beethoven’s Ninth;
And the overwhelming necessity of staying
Between the yellow lines
Guiding me home.