Waiting for a Ride

Standing at the baggage passing time:

Austin Texas airport—my ride hasn’t come yet.

My former wife is making websites from her home,

one son’s seldom seen,

the other one and his wife have a boy and girl of their own.

My wife and stepdaughter are spending weekdays in town

so she can get to high school.

My mother ninety-six still lives alone and she’s in town too,

always gets her sanity back just barely in time.

My former former wife has become a unique poet;

most of my work,

such as it is is done.

Full moon was October second this year,

I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck

white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine

owl hoots and rattling antlers,

Castor and Pollux rising strong

—it’s good to know that the Pole Star drifts!

that even our present night sky slips away,

not that I’ll see it.

Or maybe I will, much later,

some far time walking the spirit path in the sky,

that long walk of spirits—where you fall right back into the

“narrow painful passageway of the Bardo”

squeeze your little skull

and there you are again

waiting for your ride

(October 5, 2001)

Source: Danger on Peaks (Shoemaker Hoard, 2004)