Monday, August 14, 2017

Waiting

You know it’s not the best for you
but it’s summer and fries and a burger
balanced on your lap with half squeezed
Ketchup packets resting on the dashboard
and the fries balanced between the two seats
while you sit in your car  listening to a Red Sox game
reminds me of the time we stopped in a small town 
in Wyoming because they had a restaurant that advertised
the best strawberry and raspberry frozen treat
and it was so good that we backtracked the day
we left to see the bisons at Yellowstone
 to get one more cup and eat in the car and feel
divinely blessed the way I felt on the way driving
 out to Hope College and stopping to eat at roadside
diners where slices of apple pie were a hand span wide 
and all the dishes were called specials and onion rings
shaped like doughnuts came stacked like the leaning tower
but nothing compared to the footling hotdogs 
in the mountains of North Carolina 
or the watermelon seed spitting contest
after eating a meal of chicken, corn on the cob,
a buttered roll and an ice cream sized scoop 
of mashed potato served outside as a fundraiser 
for a church in a  town in New York
where I went to learn how to write 
the emotional truth of a poem
and instead found a breakfast place 
where the farmers drank mud black coffee 
and spoke about a new John Deere tractor 
to replace one that had been held together 
with baling wire and prayer
I learned to listen to stories,and look for that emotional 
truth which differs from the plain truth, 
or the facts that just follow
one another in a straight line 
until they arrive at an ending point
Once you understand what that 
means you pursue that truth
as best you can and I know I’ve got stories to tell
 and poems to write
Poems that sit in my hand 
and wait just the way you wait for bread to rise 

















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