5 Road Odes and a Song of Despair

5 Road Poems (5 Aspirations) and a Song of Despair

    a nod to Pablo Neruda

Ode to the Open Road

Open Road!  You call me
Locked down for over a year
Behind my mask
Afraid to breathe others' breath
    to touch what they had touched
We traded the silver screen
    for a big screen
       or a small screen
         or a tiny screen
Now we go back the righteous windscreen
    and roadsigns
    Interstates
    byways
    flat horizons
    rumble strips
    diner coffee
    local AM stations
         storm warnings
        piglets, quilt-scraps, and firewood
            for trade
    NPR everywhere
        Amy and Terry and Ira and Christiana
         world news and commentary for the woke
    

Ode to the Roadsign

    retroreflective paint
        black on white
        white on black
        white on green
        STOP!
        YIELD!
        WARNING!
    the 1948 Manual on Uniform Traffic Devices
    Federal Highway Administration Fonts
    Standard Alphabet for Highway Signs
        Highway Gothic, formerly A-F
        Clearview Highway
        San Serif
    to be read from a mile away

Ode to the Rumble Strip

Before seat belts and car seats,
we slept curled on a back seat
driving late into the night to get home
when the whine and hum
goes to sizzle, then a low rumble
not the flap flap flap of a flat
you know dad let the car tire touch
loose gravel, random edges of asphalt
correction!  Back to center... ahhhh...
The inventor of the rumble strip
must have done time in the same back seat
I've driven across NM/OK/KS with my eyes closed
feeling my way along
by rumble strip alone.
how many lives saved
or lost
to the humble rumble
    ...strip?

Ode to Flat Horizons

Straight line
across the windscreen
from left to right
and back
the highway
a single black strip vanishing
into that line
nothing to look for
but mirages
power and fence lines
tumbleweeds
windmills
oil derricks
a water tower in the distance
    marking a small town
    no longer on the main highway
feeling my way across the plains
by rumble-strip
I can even feel the center stripe
    through my tires
    if I close my eyes
brrrrrpP!


Ode to Diner Coffee

Now that we are used to
venti, half-caf, almond machiatto latte
    with a cherry and an umbrella on top
That classic heavy mug
    of dark black brew - bottomless
large glass bulb, orange for decaf
    acrid residue burning on the bottom
cuplets of pure half-n-half
    or flavored fake creamer
yellow, pink and green packets
    of carcinogens
and a heavy glass jar of pure cane sugar
    all you can pour
into that bottomless cup
named joe

Ode to Public Restrooms

Ode to GPS errors

Ode to Maps - with creases and missing pages

Ode to Local AM Stations

Ode to NPR anywhere


Steve Smith - May 2021 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on Self and Other: Embracing Paradoxes

This is not a poem, nor is it written by a human... it is the output of GPT4 when I first asked it to write odes to A) Umwelt; B) Umgebung; C) Innerwelt and then to reflect on the paradoxes and dualities of self-other in that regard: Reflections on Self and Other: Embracing Paradoxes In the intricate tapestry of existence, a dance unfolds between the realms of self and other, where dualities and paradoxes intertwine. Within the realm of Umwelt, individual perceptions shape our understanding of the world. Each of us holds a unique lens through which we interpret our surroundings, yet within these boundaries, we feel an inherent yearning for connection with others. It is the paradox of embracing our own distinctiveness while recognizing the shared humanity that binds us. Umgebung, the stage upon which life plays out, encompasses diverse landscapes and environments. Mountains, rivers, cities, and forests create a multitude of Umgebungen, each offering a distinct backdrop for our individua...
Read more

Moving the Bones - Rick Barot

 During our hiatus as an active weekly group, generating running multi-voice poems, I was struck with this particular one from Poem-a-Day which moved me and I thought to share it here: Moving the Bones Rick Barot There are too many ancestors, so we are gathering their bones. The poor ones, their graves broken by the roots of trees. The ones whose headstones have been weathe...
Read more

What a Stone Feels

<this is the first assignment I wrote for the Paul Kingsnorth - " Rewild Your Words " online course we took in December which is how our Poetry/Writing Sunday Salon got started. I'm CC:ing the other participants so they can see by example how to post their own work to this blog via e-mail> On my property there are many river-stones that were almost surely brought here by previous humans.   I could have closed my eyes, my ears, my nose and groped around until I found them, channeling Helen Keller perhaps... but I did not... I sought out a particularly apt stone for this purpose, with my eyes and my memory.  I have hefted these stones before and even know what they smell and taste like.    I passed over the pile brought in for the purpose of facing a wall, each about fist-sized... not too large to throw effectively but too large for a sling or slingshot.   I avoided the ones marking the good-dogs grave near the entrance to the property....
Read more