Wake Up To Find Out
In my late 40s I became
obsessed
with the Grateful Dead.
It happened just as everything
I counted on in my life died.
Again.
I took to the road
in a decades-old minivan,
no Tennessee to get back to, Jed.
It was freezing at night in Wilmington.
The winds blew a gale in San Diego.
I walked the road where James Dean died,
a little envious of his blaze.
In Monterrey, in Anza-Borrego,
in Key West, in Acadia,
in Falmouth, in Apalachicola,
I studied the road ahead for a sign.
/ / /
15 April 2024
Charlottesville VA
NaPoWriMo Day 15
Category: Van Life
last night in the van
where it’s not my choice
(podcasts in the dark)
/ / /
2 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
A Room Of One’s Own
In the cartoon,
the boy wakes up
in his berth
on a spaceship
surrounded by friends.
The image
is one of distress
in the context
of the story
but it looks like
heaven to me.
/ / /
25 March 2023
Charlottesville VA
Digging Bill Evans
I was 21, driving a used car,
no money in the bank, a job
as a waiter in my uncle’s restaurant
awaiting me in the desert.
I moved into a studio apartment:
a bed, a small sofa, a scuffed old
round table from the restaurant.
I had my stereo from back east;
the library across the street
had CDs. I’d sign them out
then sit on the floor, head
between the speakers, trying to
find my way into the music.
Now I have a 20-year-old son.
I can’t afford a studio apartment.
I don’t have a job waiting for me.
I’m still trying to find my way
into whatever story the music is telling.
/ / /
21 November 2022
State College PA
a million droplets
a million pixels
van life in the rain
/ / /
11 November 2022
State College PA
Day 600 of the haiku notebook project. I’m going to take a break from this project. I’m doing that for two reasons: I’d like to focus on longer poems, and I noticed that forcing myself to write a haiku every day means I sometimes write when I don’t have very much to say. I really like the form, but I’d like to take a little pause from it.
through the rain:
Kannon bodhisattva
atop the hill in Fitchburg
/ / /
16 October 2022
State College PA
As of today I’ve been living in a van for 22 months and I was going to set up a nice photo and use my tripod and pose a little bit and then I decided that after 22 months I would just snap a picture of myself in the driver’s seat after having just pulled up to the gym where I’m going to work out and shower and while still wearing the sweatpants and sweatshirt I slept in because honestly this is pretty much what the majority of van life is, being slightly stinky and finding vastly more complex ways to do incredibly simple things and then occasionally being somewhere pretty that you can take a photo of and also not paying rent, which is nice.
Leave a Commentdown to 45 tonight
a harbinger of winter
van dweller’s bane
/ / /
22 September 2022
State College PA
mother nature’s stand-in
the tiny little fan
blows a tiny little breeze
/ / /
16 September 2022
State College PA
raven on the lamppost
vans lined up beneath
testing the wind’s direction
/ / /
13 September 2022
State College PA
the soft triplets
of unknown insects
traffic on the road below
/ / /
9 September 2022
State College PA
gray-blanketed morning
two terriers scamper
onto the stony trail
/ / /
7 September 2022
State College PA
The Song Of A Million Insects
I stood in the yard of my former wife’s house
and told you (across an ocean) that I worry
there’s no place for me in this world.
A year later I drive by that same yard
on my way to the trailhead
where I park my minivan in lieu of a life.
A million insects are singing
as the moon flirts with an appearance
from behind the smothering clouds.
There’s another minivan in the small gravel lot.
No lights showing inside, no sound.
Two minivans and a million tiny lives.
It’s a miracle to be here at all, I guess.
I have no good answer for Mary Oliver,
so I let the question hang.
/ / /
6 September 2022
State College PA
