Back to Nature or I won't give up my seat on the bus to a whooping crane.

Everywhere is the singing of the expected

and the glories of the assumed.

And I revel in them:

in elevators, central heat

and in-the-ground swimming pools.

I do not share my father's pride

in snow-stumbling walks to school.

I defy character-building forays

into the woods to carve out winter heat

with an ax.

My natural element is polyurethane

as I rest in my electronic ark

appliances about me,

two of every kind.

Noble savage?

Rousseau?

Hell, no. I won't go.

Newark Airport

Here at the baggage claim,

I am a traveler without a world.

Where are my friends?

Does no one love me? (Am I alone?)

Or, am I lost at a crossroads

and only my map shows this destination?

I walk frantically from information booth

to pay telephone.

Who is going my direction?

Who can help me balance

three brown suitcases and a typewriter?

Has New Jersey died?

Up and down America

the radio babbles how Newark was lost,

slipped into a rift of time

and is gone forever.

The curious come to the edges of the earth,

gawking at the chasm,

where the dirty waters lap into the void.

Who is going my way?

Who will be my friend?

Hail a taxi?

Search for my lost hat?

I am stranded on a technological isle

while an omniscient voice prophesies,

"Piedmont Airlines, paging Satan.

Meet your party at the ticket counter."

A bus rumbles by.

I see a horned-figure

driving twenty five souls to hell

on the group plan.

The voice rings out again:

"All passengers, buses to heaven on the right.

Please have your tickets ready."

I rush to the ticket counter,

last dollars clutched in my hand.

The attendant laughs,

not Heaven,

the bus to Hoboken.

I sit disconsolately on a white, plastic chair

in an uncharged land

where strange tribes abound:

ravenous porters, headhunting chauffeurs,

wild-eyed cocktail lounge bartenders.

As hour comes, an hour goes.

I am alone.

Who will be my friend?

I ignore the continuing loudspeaker

I will be alone and unafraid;

not quailing at the squawking baggage belt

or startled by the voices

like dying animals

whose tortured cries

test my resolve.

The alarms are not for me.

I am here.

This is where I am going.

Spring

The roads are open.

The timid Honda and Suzuki

venture forth.

Is winter over?

Are the trees blooming freely?

A sprinting wind answers?

The growl builds in their throats.

Tires spin and churn.

Hands clench the handle bars.

Roads are waiting to be stirred.

Virgins, beware.

It is spring again.

A Modern Prayer

Unsaturate my soul, Oh God.

Grant me clean breath,

a shiny floor

and hemorrhoids

that shrink without surgery.

Decaffeinate my life, Oh Lord.

Flame broil my hamburgers

and render my laundry

a soft, wrinkle-free white.

Now I lay me down to sleep

aided by these two

powerful, fast-acting tablets,

available without a prescription.

And if I die before I wake,Publish Post

I'm in good hands with All-State.

Give me a shock-free ride,

as smooth as Christ's walk across the water.

Accept no substitutes.

Colorado Journey

What a hoot!
North Colorado's forty ugly miles;
a rolling belly of plain,
freckled with towns so small,
it's not worth the ink
to print their names, then rising to nipples of earth
pointed to the sky's moist mouth.

Fuzzy trees clutch the earth,
hiding from the west wind.
A scenic point:
rocks stacked like dinosaur dung,
await removal.

Me, in Wyoming?
A gas.
There's nothing but that sky,
657 Black Angus cattle
and a rider outlined against the mountains.
The miles are like a nagging melody
on the way to Cheyenne.

Over the Rockies,
clouds hang like phantom peaks
How high they are
only the wind knows.

As they drift,
snow threatens.
I am miles from the safety of a gas station
or even an official Colorado rest stop.
I can make Nebraska by night
if the weather holds.

In the distance,
the rider raises his hat.
I am a lone rider also
and raise my hat to the wind.
No snow shall stop my journey.

Great Salt Lake

Above the slick waters

I spy the islands

brown, where they should be green,

barren, where there should be life.

Water is cool, soothing.

It brings rejoicing to small children

on hot days.

But this water is different;

still

accumulating the crystalline outpourings

of the mountains.

We can, if we wish, swim,

we will float quickly and easily

and take pleasure in scarlet ribbons of sunset

in the western sky.

And so, it is, when I have looked down

on the great sea in the setting sun.

I know that familiar lustrous body does not refresh

that it cannot feed the islands

or slake thirst.

It is unsettling that the familiar

is an illusion,

expected comforts

slip away as we spit out

the acrid water.

But yet, there is promise,

for those who will grasp it

For when we approach the shore with courage

we are borne upon the waters

with ease.