At the Department of Motor Vehicles
grooveamatic
Posts: 1,374
I. In the Lobby
The sparkling teenagers moseying
Take no note of my entrance,
The twentysix year-old fogey
Who has driven for ten years
(off and on)
And is dressed nothing like them.
There is much commotion.
They are all nervous.
I try to remember
(how I must have fretted!)
But the memory is cartoonish,
Tainted by nostalgia
And happenstance years.
II. In Line
Merging into the appropriate cattle-queue,
I find myself with an older lot:
Men and women here not for tests
But for quibbling trifles,
Add-ons to noisy lives.
Their bodies
(and mine, too)
In a constant state of weight shift, from one foot
To the other, blinking, fiddling with keys,
Filling the time from here to there.
The sparkling teenagers moseying
Take no note of my entrance,
The twentysix year-old fogey
Who has driven for ten years
(off and on)
And is dressed nothing like them.
There is much commotion.
They are all nervous.
I try to remember
(how I must have fretted!)
But the memory is cartoonish,
Tainted by nostalgia
And happenstance years.
II. In Line
Merging into the appropriate cattle-queue,
I find myself with an older lot:
Men and women here not for tests
But for quibbling trifles,
Add-ons to noisy lives.
Their bodies
(and mine, too)
In a constant state of weight shift, from one foot
To the other, blinking, fiddling with keys,
Filling the time from here to there.
.........................................................................
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Thanks!
Strange, isn't it, how you can be treated--in the same day--like a child many times and like an old person many times, all depending on who you see. I end up never quite knowing how old I am.
Your path chronicles a reflection
Upon the glassen sea, stitching
Restitching wounds upon the water.
It's depths await to snatch you.
I shall gather stones and wait.
Well, that wouldn't matter.
You could always include an explanatory footnote and it would be fine. We have a DVLA here.
(Roads and Traffic Authority).......Swansea is in Wales.....Swan Sea.....sounds so nice.....(gonna post a picture of a swan soon)....
Thanks,
That what you just said to me could mean.
First and most apparent, you could have meant
That in fact you do hate the opera
And think that the art form is dead,
Especially in the Southwest portion of France;
Or of course you could have meant it sarcastically,
And you really still love the opera,
Especially in the South of France;
Or you could have meant that you hate to travel
And would rather walk to Kingdom-Come
Than fly to Europe in today's air-travel industry;
Or you could have been saying
That terrorism scares you
And you're not afraid to admit it;
Or you could have meant you'll never concede
That you were wrong about the IRA
When you said that silly thing you said
Six years ago at my friends Irish wake;
Or you could have meant that death scares you
Up a wall, especially the possibility
Of being blown-up in a car as you turn the ignition
While you wait for a pal to emerge from the cafe
With your drinks and mini-sandwiches;
Or, of course, you could have been saying
You really do love me, and of course
You'll go to Hawaii with me next Spring.
It's blight and bounty bend
Hushed with eons;
A single leaf swoops slowly
To join the dawdling portrait
Beneath the blooming pews.
I like this one especially.
Why, thank you! I am quite partial to it myself. 'Tis one of my babies!
Thank you very much.
I must say, it is quite interesting how varied the reads of this poem are. This is the first time I'd heard the "stone-skipping" interpretation. I like it! The poem reads very nice with that interpretation in mind.
Now I am very impressed, you wrote that very well.
With a heart attack, most likely--
It was at the flea market that occurs
Every Sunday in the baseball field
Beside my house.
She lay there quite still,
Her insides arguing most likely,
And no one came running
But one woman wearing khaki shorts,
A daughter probably--
Somebody's daughter--
Who knelt to tend to her.
(she was already dead? perhaps).
The other market-goers stood,
Seemingly stricken themselves,
Stranded in place and looking on,
Listening as the ambulance
From not-so-far away
Took up it's familiar and chilling cry;
Not just a wailing, but a caution:
You should be good.
A quite elderly woman bossed her way to my drive-through
Window wanting food. Upon passing me her hard-lived-for
Money, my fingers briefly scraped the tips of hers,
And they were terrible, dead things,
Scabrous extensions depleted of vigor or tautness
Hardened at the end like pencil-eraser nubs.
Whether these hands were worn heavy with worry,
Decades of turmoil and injustice and life's folly,
Or whether these lecherous ladyfingers had become laminate
As the hands that doled out the beatings, ear-cuffings,
Being the manacles that held down and slapped,
I won't pretend to know. But like dried candybars
They crumbled and dissolved as I put her change
In her shrinking palm, her fingernails crunching
Like bugs under her tires as she drove off.
I laughed, and so did everyone else who saw it.