(Monday, September 03, 2007: for Alan R.)
by Clarinda Harriss
How did we get here?
We should’ve exited right after the Bay Bridge.
This is not the way we came.
One minute a flat silver twilight on water,
suddenly what looks like a downtown intersection.
How did we get here
and what are those blue lights, a road-block?
Look! a cop’s crouching to chalk-line a person.
This is not the way we came—
I could swear this is Washington.
Look to your left. Right! There’s the Capitol dome!
How did we get here?
It’s what we get for fiddling with the speakers
while driving under the influence of poetry-talk.
This is not the way to come
to safe places—home, bed, sleep, early
to rise for work making grown-up money.
How did we get here?
(But isn’t this the way we always come?)
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