Poetry For The American Road Tripper

even the darkness
cannot eat away the light
of a tiny match

by Vivian Shibata


*this haiku was on the label of a great bottled tea. Whole Foods had a sale ...and I get inspired while drinking and driving in Utah.
Fortune cookies have got to step up their game



Living in America

'Living in America,'
the intelligent people at Harvard say,
'is the price you pay for living in New England.'

Californians think
living in America is a reward
for managing not to live anywhere else.

The rest of the country?
Could it be sagging between two poles,
tastelessly decorated, dangerously overweight?

No. Look closely.
Under cover of light and noise
both shores are hurrying towards each other.

San Francisco
is already half way to Omaha.
Boston is nervously losing its way in Detroit.

Desperately the inhabitants
hope to be saved in the middle.
Pray to the mountains and deserts to keep them apart.

by Anne Stevenson from Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems

*eerily apt in light of my trip across the country and move to Boston