ROAD WARRIORS

My traveling clothes light up the noon.

I’ve been on my way for a long time

                                                               back to the past,

That irreconcilable city.

Everyone wants to join me, it seems, and I let them.

Roadside flowers drive me to distraction,

                                                                        dragonflies

Hover like lapis lazuli, there, just out of reach.

Narrow road, wide road, all of us on it, unhappy,

Unsettled, seven yards short of immortality

And a yard short of not long to live.

Better to sit down in the tall grass

                                                            and watch the clouds,

To lift our faces up to the sky,

Considering—for most of us—our lives have been one constant mistake.