early Monday morning
This morning I woke up at five am and didn’t hit the snooze button because I’m trying to quit it - cold turkey. Running through my head were lines from a poem I read a long time ago.
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I met this guy James in a poetry workshop during my sophomore year of undergrad. He was one of those incredibly dreamy guys - a couple of years older than me, wore corduroys and carried a worn leather satchel, and when I went over to his apartment to return the copy of Charles Bukowski’s Hostage that he lent me there were a few impossibly cool kids sitting around listening to obscure bands, drinking, and smoking cigarettes. He wrote this poem that I loved. And though I’ve forgotten most of it, and I’m sure at least part of what I remember is wrong, I still love it. It’s been over ten years since I’ve read it, but every time I cross the Walt Whitman Bridge I can’t help but repeat the first two lines in my head. And this morning, while resisting the urge to sleep for ‘just ten more minutes’, not a bridge in sight, there they were.
the cars are riding your spine, Walt Whitman
the cars are riding your spine
…
isn’t it enough for someone
somewhere to be happy
photo of Walt Whitman Bridge by Dick Swanson
