Directions

Maybe today you could write a poem. I know, I know. Writing poems and sharing them feels too much like asking for lambchops at a meat counter while my pants are down around my ankles. Cringe.

It's time to forget about the classmate who laughed when we read our poem about the petunia growing in the pavement crack. Take in an experience today like its grape juice concentrate from the can: Drink it in short, careful sips. That's what poets do. Someone said they're the athletes of language. I agree. From nouns and verbs, they create energy that is so much more powerful because they are containing and directing it in a bounded space. Their own playing field.

Your home is your sanctuary. Have you ever considered writing a poem about finding your way home? I'll share mine with you. Pants down around ankles. Argh. After reading it, you should write yours. Promise?

Directions
after Billy Collins, and Connie Wanek

You will know you have found it
when the gray, worn asphault says,
Uncle, and green and gravel stand
triumphant, holding up
my home, a brown bird house
high outside the aviary.

You will not so much observe
its post and lintel construction
as you will feel the logs, a quilt, positioned
over and around you. Snug.

The road is long,
God, I know.

The asphault and concrete may
start to wear, to sand down your purchase
on earth, and water, and fire, and sky -
numbing your forward sight - ‘til
you desire only to pull over, murmuring
nothing. at the end. of this road.

You might even drift, for a time,
across the center line.
Maybe a wheel slips the edge, an axel shudders.
Don’t hope for romance, a moose, perhaps.
Rumble strips work just fine.

Just let yourself be jerked, if you must,
awakened before it’s too late.
Because then, if you follow
the songs of the birds
you will find the trees thickening
and thrumming.

And there I will be.

It is nothing, I know
like what the hungry architect had in mind,
when she bent herself over the drawing,
letting the nape of her still neck be used
by the fluorescent lights, a dance floor for their buzzing.

Don’t bring wine.
We’ll drink the trees.
You and I.
When you arrive.