The Bus
doesn’t stop here
even when or if
you step out there
in its way
it doesn’t stop here.
Debts
Eventually, if we live
long enough and are lucky enough
they all go away. The
final payment is due, is done
and somehow we’ve won.
We have accomplished
the burning mortgage,
fully owned appliances, a car.
Everything secure so
far. But we have built our lives
around them, piled them
up, added to them and then
refinanced everything
again. We stacked and stored
them, borrowed from
Peter to pay Paul, one step
ahead of one step
behind, but we didn’t mind. They
have been a major
feature of the landscape of our lives,
the mountains and the
mole hills, the avalanches and
the earthquakes. They
have held us together and pulled
us apart, a
conversation piece we’d miss, a topic we
avoid. They send us off
to work in the morning and
greet us at the end of
the day and never seem to go away.
Explaining the 60s, Once More
I remember “moderation”
quite well,
It haunted the schools I
attended.
We read Aristotle, as
they intended,
And discussed, if I
remember correctly,
How his ethics fit what
we had for lives.
Everything in moderation
– we read in
Moderation, discussed
what we had read
In moderation, saw the
wonders of
Moderation in the
ensuing moderation,
Understood it and went
on to live it
In moderation, knew the
dangers of
The alternatives, how
extremes become
Unseemly, how they
become unbecoming,
Nothing to excess we
mumbled and
Then we moved on,
graduated and
Became models of
moderation, but
That didn’t last all
that very long
J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His
recent poems have appeared in Eskimo Pie,
Record, Yellow Chair Review, Eye on life Magazine, and Leaves of Ink.
No comments:
Post a Comment