The Millennial Pedestrian

Are We There Yet?

Shortly after we set off
we already want to know.

We travel down the road a bit
    and ask to go to the bathroom.

The grownups are displeased.
They suggest we play a game.

We do.
The game involves a lot of questions –
    at least twenty, often many more.

We try to change the rules
    so we’ll always win.

Now the grownups have to go to the bathroom.

We drive all the way across Pennsylvania.
The grownups age, sicken, let us drive.

We are in control now, driving faster,
    anxious to get there.

We cross the Mississippi,
which only takes a minute,
we speed across the Great Plains.
Ahead looms up a range of snow-capped peaks.

Tornadoes, green and black, pursue us,
    howling.
A funnel cloud picks up our car,
hurls it in a ditch.
We walk on west.

By now the grownups are all dead and
we have children of our own.

Step by step we trudge on down the teeming road
with our unruly families,
    so many walking with us
eyes fixed on the gleaming mountain peaks,
    so near now.

We are almost there.
We leave our children by the road.
As we turn
    for one last look
    they get into a car.

They speed on by.
They don’t even wave.

But we are almost there.
The road is climbing
the air is thin and cold
and now the snow is dusting us with white
as one by one we vanish in the storm.

    

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007.
It's part of the New Poems category.
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