Warming up

Is there anything worse than looking up from a weekend of revelry to see a three-hour drive preparing to hit you in the face with a shaving cream pie? Have you ever noticed that every state claims to have the worst drivers in the country? Do you catch the difference as you cross state lines, two kisses at the Pennsylvania border?

I put off learning to drive as long as I possibly could — so until I reached my senior year of high school and my parents (rightfully) insisted I needed to pick up the skill. I’m not anxious about driving anymore, but it does bring out a side of me I don’t love. The far-from-unique hubris of flying down a highway.

Lately, I’ve been taking the bus to work. Though it’s a long ride, my mind feels clearer than it did when I was driving over the bridge and across town nearly daily. There’s no catharsis crying after my commute. There’s no raw vocal cords from shouting at someone who cut me off. There’s only gratitude to the bus driver, who endured this for me, on my way off the vehicle — a walk through the park awaits.

Oh, yeah, I’m tackling National Poetry Writing Month again this year. I’ll try to make it past the 11th this time. See you with a warm-up prompt tomorrow; for now, enjoy this ode to my bus line.

Ode to 64B

Three tunnels of smoke
or are they towers

I love taking the bus
because I never saw
the bald eagles carefully
surveying the park
outside the aviary
as a driver-seat commuter

I never spent the rolling
wheeling hour through
this city suppressing
a smile as a child babbles
a twinkling twinkling star
song from the row behind

I couldn’t pause to jot
down an idea, or read
the poem you sent

I write I stop
I think I repeat
I find myself touching
the tip of a wrought
iron fence and find
it doesn't much inspire