Rainy Day Trip

Rainy Day Trip

I’m on a journey in the rain

where destinations are

scarce as kind words in hell, with

too many out of state dreams.

Lovers and others get lost in the dark,

tarry and black as truckstop coffee.

Not far enough

behind me comes a dog, 

a hound of the basketcases,

so I don’t travel at night

any more.

In the day my car is the knife

I take to the buttery sunlight

But it softens and runs

streaky yellow and then liquid away

down the ditch at the side of the road

buttercup yellow with new flowers.

Jewel spots dancing

like glare become

blindspots of grease in the  rain

on my windshield.

While I drive I wonder

things, like

“would coffee taste as good without a smell?”

and 

“is this hard wind a politician,

pushing air for a job?”

or

“does time fly because it's a lost balloon,

or a deer before the wolfpack?”

The answers are

scarce as jokes from an undertaker,

ruffles

on a machine gun.

April 2011

Posted for Magpie Tales # 60


Uncredited photo provided by Magpie Tales removed