Hold the bus!

Last night at my book club, the subject of public transportation came up. Just for the fun it, here is a poem that I wrote last summer about public transportation—two kinds:

The Morning After You Stopped by for Dinner

for B.


Stuck inside a bus broken down
on the highway shoulder, I think of you
in Houston, or en route,
your long day of going from Tokyo,
and then the day over again
and a red-eye—not yours—
to the twin cities, so close to home.

But first you are booked to Texas, must go
alone to the Lone Star state
while the man you love flies on to Wisconsin,
makes coffee, feeds the chickens.

You are in a plastic chair
bolted by the windows,
vistas of concrete,
or sandwiched in the air,
where sunrise leaks through portholes

as passing trucks rock the coach I’m on.
That man over there
with a traveling voice is talking,
talking, and maybe today Christopher
has abandoned all voyagers
in favor of breakfast, maybe
a blessed bowl of raisin bran—

but now the tow truck
is backing up. We switch buses,
ease onto the road.

Somewhere near water,
the planes are rising,
trailing vapor across the sky.

And from another occasion (another poem)

The work week has started, which means I'm back to a little biking and perhaps less writing.

Is it possible that the biking pumps up the endorphins, and then I'm so blissed out that I don't need to pursue a creative outlet? That's kind of scary. Let's not go there.

My little bike poem has not progressed, but when I bike I think about writing, and I also think about my stepson Jamie, who is a big-time cyclist.

So in the spirit of biking and writing and occasional poetry, I thought I'd share a poem that I wrote years ago for his birthday, when he and his Dad were in training for the annual Seattle-to-Portland ride. (It's an old poem; Jamie's 27 now.)

Sixteen


Rubber taunts the road
as you pedal up hills, over bridges.
The first warm day in a week refuses
to loosen its grasp of the dramatic.

A gull wing flashes white
against the dark berm of watercolor cloud
you race toward
then past,

the way you passed your father
a mile back, legs pumping strong,
lungs fired with a smack of salt air.
Up ahead the sky bends pale

and you push harder
into the clear unknown.

Occasional poetry

Yesterday, while I was slogging up a long slow rise on Mercer Island, I started thinking about a bike poem—a very tongue-in-cheek type of prayer poem. I don't know whether it will work, but it must be funny (I tell you, I look pretty funny by about mile 7, with my face all red and gasping).

It's too rough still to post here—to rough even to qualify as a draft—but I started thinking about some of the other poems that I've written for special situations, special people, and special occasions.

Always, for me, there is an initial stretch of panic, followed by a dry spell and one or several starts before I'm able to find the right balance between the event or the person and what the poem itself wants to stay.

I've found that some of them work out better than others. For some of those efforts, their merit lies more in their presence as a gift than in an poetic power or craft. And sometimes they come out really strong!

But I was thinking how even if those poems don't really stand on their own after the day is done, they are written for their audience, and they reach their audience—and how often does that happen?

I've written few poems for birthdays (one that I wrote before my middle child was born—and then I saved it for 15 years) and a couple of poems for weddings. I'm posting one here, which was written for my sister's wedding:

Convocation


After a meal and a moment,
you enter the wide evening,
turn east toward lilac dusk
and the steep flights
to Hunter Boulevard.

The city unfolds below you
like a fan of watered silk
or a deck of cards.

Take a breath, deeply.

You have held your hands close,
drawing for two of a kind,
keeping an ace in your cuff.

A train’s descant, parting sorrow,
rises over Beacon Hill,
settles like thin rain,
the echoes of a saxophone.

Breathe deeply. Sing.

In the measures of music,
you meet a language
for desire and trust,
map chords or discord
to a treasured resolution.

Twilight strikes a solemn key,
matches the color of morning
and you trace the sun’s descent
into the valley, the old high school
gone rose in the day's denouement.

Take a breath. Say Yes.

It’s not the stairs you’ve counted,
but the steps ahead.
You find a pace that fits
to walk in all weather.

How about you? Do you write poems for family and friends and special occasions? How do you approach that project?

P.S. This was written as a follow-up poem to "The Fine Art of Measurement." I don't have a direct link to that poem online, but it was published in Weathered Steps (Rose Alley Press).