Spent most of today traveling. I had a poetry reading at a public library in a city about 120 or so miles away. A good poet friend drove there and back. Because I wasn't driving, all of my natural driving instincts remained muzzled. Believe it or not, I can get a little . . . angry when behind the wheel. Even my kids know that I'm a different person while operating a motor vehicle.
Sharon Olds gets called out by her daughter . . .
Pre-Adolescent in Spring
by: Sharon Olds
Through the glass door thin as a light freeze on the pond,
my girl calls me out.
She is sucking ice, a cup of cubes
beside her, sparkling and loosening.
The sun glints in her hair dark as the
packed floor of the pine forest,
its hot resin smell rising like a
smell of sex She leaps off the porch and
runs on the grass, her buttocks like an unripe
apricot. She comes back, hair
smoking, face cool and liquid,
skin that vital, translucent white of the
casing of milk-weed pods. She fishes
another cube from the cup with her tongue.
Around us the flat spears of bulbs
are rising from inside the ground.
Above us the buds are opening. I hold
tight to this child beside me, and she
leans her body against me, heavy,
in layers still folded, its fragrance only
half unlocked, but the ice now rapidly
melting in her mouth.
Sharon Olds provides a pretty vivid portrait of her daughter. No longer her mother's "little" girl, the daughter nevertheless seeks out the comfort of Olds' embrace. In this in-between state--not quite adult and not quite child--the daughter is a bud beginning to open, an unripe apricot, a bulb "rising from inside the ground." The emphasis here is on growth and beauty.
As I said up above, I'm sometimes not the easiest to get along with. I get moody, angry, happy, all in the space of about one minute. When driving, I become possessed, especially if I've had a shitty day. The smallest of inconveniences become the Hindenburg exploding into flames. For the most part, I'm able to control my occasional bouts of temper. Most people who know me have probably never seen me angry.
All kinds of circumstances feed the angry red monster inside me. Exhaustion. Stupidity. Donald Trump. Bad poetry. Driving a car. Change. My kids (the ones who know you best are the ones who can piss you off the most). However, I control my anger. Focus it. Try to transform it into something creative and constructive and positive. Except when it comes to bad driving.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about road rage, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write a poem of address to someone or something that angers you. It might be a former lover, a pair of shoes that gave you blisters, or the mosquito that buzzed in your ear all night. Extra credit: employ a 6-line stanza and an AABBCC rhyme scheme in each stanza.
Dear Person Who Cut Me Off in Traffic
by: Martin Achatz
You were in your Durango, weaving
in and out and around, in such
a frenzy to be first somewhere
or some when. Maybe a dying parent,
a spouse giving birth, or a house
on fire, your family gathered across
the street, watching their lives become
cinder and smoke and ash. Perhaps
you are late for work for the fourth
time this week, your supervisor
having warned you that just one
more tardy punch would mean
the end of your time at the company,
and your son needs braces, daughter
requires insulin, wife in the middle
of chemo treatments, her bald head
now fuzzed, eyes dark as wells,
no water or bottom in sight.
Or maybe, just maybe, you were meeting
the love of your life at a movie theater,
a date you'd planned a month in advance,
engagement ring in your pocket, a dozen
roses on the passenger seat, your Brut
cologne so strong in the cab of the truck
your eyes water, blurring everything.
Another possibility: you're plain tired
after a 12-hour shift at the auto
plant, only bed on your mind,
the promise of pillow cold as February.
Whatever your reason for swerving
in front of me tonight, I forgive you,
because life is too short to hold
onto anger, even if your bumper
had a "Trump 2024" sticker on it.
I mean, everyone makes mistakes,
don't they?
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