Tag Archives: methods of travel

Goodbye Old Paint, for the dVerse Poetics Challenge

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Old for New

Goodbye Old Paint

What have you eaten that we have forgotten?
What lost earring resides
in the deepest recesses of your front seat?
What coins shaken and pushed into your crevasses?
And do you remember the song made up on the spot
and sung just once, then left forgotten in Nevada?

Do you still carry the dust of Tonopah
or that yearning to actually see something extraterrestrial
on the Extraterrestrial Highway?
Do you carry shards of his boredom while driving
mile after mile of Utah beauty?
Do you still carry her expectations
of sharing the giant faces of Rushmore
and echoes of the fact that he expected more?

What of molecules of the Mississippi crossing
or dreams of the memories of Hannibal?
What sweat from those Mississippi hours
waiting outside the B.B. King Museum?

Salt grains and crumbs of chocolate
and DNA of those few souls who rode along in you—
all parked in a parking lot waiting to be bought
by someone who will never know the hidden you.
Just like the rest of the world,
frequented by interlopers.
Only we, leaving you, will murmur “Goodbye Old Paint”
and know that although you neither hear nor answer,
somehow our past is locked up inside of you
and there a part of us will stay
while we depart without it.

The dVerse Poetics Challenge is:  to write a poem that conjures a view (whether from your travels or everyday life, whether from desire or experience) that is colored by the emotion of the moment. This poem was originally written in answer to This blog by Forgottenman. I had totally forgotten it, but when it popped up in another context today, it  just seemed to meet this prompt so well that I had to repeat it.

Air Despair

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Air Despair

I get goosebumps every time I travel via jet,
but I haven’t  crashed and burned or perished as of yet.
Pedants say my chances of crashing are remote,
but nonetheless, if I could choose, I’d rather take a boat.

The revelry is greater and the distance to the ground
is cushioned way much better with water all around.
It’s easier to stretch one’s legs, there’s shuffleboard, a pool,
and every cabin has a bed with private sink and stool!

Although planes are faster, what’s the hurry? What’s the rush?
Consider airplane food, the tiny restrooms and the crush.
First class in planes has nothing on last class in luxury cruisers.
In short, I think planes were invented for impatient losers!!

Prompts today are revelry, jet, pedant and goosebumps.

Hard Transit

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DSC08775

Hard Transit

My grandfather and his two teenaged daughters
drove a wagon to Dakota to claim a homestead.
I never asked how many weeks they traveled, or the hardships that they faced.
The young don’t know what answers they will wish for until it’s too late;
so only imagination serves to describe the heat,
day after day with no water except for what they carried,
coyotes, gray wolves and the glaring sun of the treeless prairie.
My aunts were just young girls dealing with the difficulties young girls face
in the sparsest of conditions. No mother. No outhouses.
The jarring ride—grasshoppers so thick the wagons skidded off the tracks,
and that loneliness of riding into
the emptiness of a strange world.

Now, I stand impatiently at the immigration window,
then the ticket line and the security line.
I empty pockets, discard water bottle,
remove computers from their cases, take off shoes,
raise my arms for the check,
struggle up the escalator with bag and purse,
find the right gate,
negotiate the walkway to the plane,
lift the heavy carry-on and lower myself into the too-small seat.
“Plane travel isn’t what it used to be,” my neighbor says,
and we console each other about how hard it is.
“Nine hours from Guadalajara to St. Louis—
a plane change and a three-hour layover in Atlanta,”
I grumble, and he sympathizes.

 

This is a rewrite of a poem I wrote so long ago that even I don’t remember it! The prompt today is sympathize. 

How’s It Going?

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DSC00264How’s It Going?

Whether I’m going near or far,
my choice of travel is always car.
I like to go at my own pace,
to break away from life’s mad race,

to take that road that leads to “where?”
and see what they are keeping there.
At roadside diners to share a yarn.
To investigate that leaning barn.

A tour or cruise or packaged deal
does not account for how I feel.
They’re too much like  our daily life––
alarm clocks, deadlines, schedules, strife.

Serendipity is what sates
while schedule just regulates.
In short, when going over yonder,
I prefer to merely wander.

n response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.”You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, or car? (Or something else entirely — bike? Hot air balloon?)