Poems For Today - April 30

BUS TO ANYWHERE

 

And when there's no real need to go

Anywhere, just the will to be,

Drive to the coast

Somewhere between Santa Cruz

And San Luis Obispo

In a bus that reads The Inner Journey

On its brow, in unassuming print,

Painted with sunflowers, lotus, grape vines,

The night sky, a green man.

Do it on a day when the sunlight

And the breezes are in a dervish,

So that the surf is a wild gallop

Of sparkle and foam.

At your other flank, the vultures

Tease their fluttering capes over

Hills drunk with green.

Stop only if you spot pelicans fishing.

Watch their rowdy plunges,

Wings folded as if in a last desperate

Prayer. Listen through the roar

For the wet slap of their bodies

Meeting the ocean.

You might be hearing the distant thwack

Of a poem, like wet jeans on asphalt.

Write the words on the thigh of the bus,

Or on its snout, or its broad butt..

Recite them to the wind at the next

Stop. Let the sounds trip

Off your tongue like seeds,

Or gadflies for the comfortable towns.

Release them, wild breakers,

To pound the sleeping sand.

 

‑‑K. Lauren de Boer

April, 2008