what an amazing journey life is
what a terrible destination
my central texas babylon matches hell’s wager
and raises it ten degrees.
my daughter is on a winged submarine 8000 miles above the clouds.
I walk next to hard-hatted men hammering steel to life
next to a building with its guts spilling out
this gory site brought to me today by June sunlight
and an email memo
“we’re making renovations”
so I take a sabbatical to the yogurt shop
and dive into bus exhaust and cigarette smoke crossing Guadalupe,
remembering the time hollee drove all the way to the triangle
for a grilled cheese, remembering this morning
dropping off my son at westenfield park
and how he walked away from me and back again
the blue backpack strapped to his razor-sharp shoulders
but in his shadow, a man awakening
and he’d be damned if I walked him all the way
to where three trees met in a circle and other
campers waited in their shade sans mothers
“mom I’ll be ok” irritation twitching his face
reminding me of his father
meanwhile my daughter sleeps in a metal machine
suspended over the earth and I have just
crossed the threshold of heat
to air-conditioned sweetness alone
mission accomplished,
next destination unknown.
EP, 6-25-2019
