There’s a four-door sedan parked in the cul de sac
out front wheels cocked
not a single tangent line to be found
Yet we know there’s a poem there if I can find the title
and learn how to break out
open Somewhere Anywhere
So I found myself a placeholder for now
a working title a desperate poet
if desperate enough to search it out
may find anything in desperation
except perhaps a hold for all the poetry
a prolific Paradiso of sorts
where everything is poetry
unsorting itself
In two or more voices nonetheless three four a crowd
at a time
and nothing has to rhyme nor echo as we’re all haunted
by time itself
so the family car seems the sensible choice
and a perfectly good waste
of a backseat
Especially to the desperate poet doing circles in haste
at the end of his street
and can’t help it 'tis a cul de sac and a poet after all
I ran my bicycle smack dab into the backend of a parked Buick once
a child
That’s when I knew
Life would be hard
Always looking up
but I thought that’s where we were going
I was busy pedaling uphill that time
and watching a painter paint
A green house red
High up on a ladder
and seeing how the mourning doves in the eaves could hardly care less
already warming in the sun
their early summer-morning song didn’t change a bit
Though the painter got a kick out of my crash
And told me I’d better watch where I’m going
But if I had
We would have never got here
And what if I’d never learnt to true a wheel?
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash