Poems of the Road

          Sunday Drive

It was a Sunday drive

but I wasn’t driving like

a Sunday driver on backroads 

going to a main highway going

to the city going to a street

going to a house thinking about

the past and future trying to sidestep 

the present knowing how everything 

goes through the moment 

how every end has a beginning 

and every beginning holds an end.

 

 

           Well-known Roads

I don’t know if I can drive well-known roads

anymore the way memories pile up mile

after mile adding weight making me want

to suddenly brake forgetting there’s ice

on the road not being able to stop anything.

There are only so many roads and the new

ones become like the old – memories transfer

from one backroad, from one highway 

to another so I can't tell when I’ll get there

and when I get there if I can say, “I’m here.”

               Ascertain

I am trying to ascertain why some things

remembered and some things yet 

to be remembered make me cry.

What strikes my heart,

what strikes my eyes,

and why I cannot strike 

a refusal to cry.

-Byron Hoot

  hootism:  we should not be surprised by acts of gun violence when so many TV shows, movies, video games, music depict a gun in someone's hand as a solution to a problem.  

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