Roadblock

Call me the bee buzzing in the museum.

The younger sister fussing through a house

still stiff with loss.

The meddling goblin in the mausoleum.

My dream: with three in the front seat, we drive

under a bridge and halt. A huge gray bus

blocks the whole road, including us,

the only travelers who are left alive.

It’s drizzling; the windshield wiper blades

busily gesture, yet we’re nearly blind.

You two seem not to mind

blank windows, pulled-down shades.

I mind. I want to get out and explore,

to move around

the deathly obstacle. “Don’t make a sound,”

you say. (Who are you?) “Don’t go near that door.”

Our mountain drive last month—that wasn’t dreamed.

We three again. We ran a dog down. I

alone looked back, alone let out a cry.

I saw it lying in its blood and screamed.

So tell me what these images portend.

Am I a noisy bird of evil omen

or just a person, apprehensive, human,

moving ahead, kid sister into woman,

stonewalled by death each time she rounds a bend?

Source: Halfway Down the Hall: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1998)