A collection of 95 of poems ranging from the sublime to the playful, from the contemplative to the humorous. A common thread runs through them all—a celebration of the human spirit and the natural world as one integral reality. Some of the poems were inspired by the Poetic Opening bus tour of California organized by Isaias Nobel and Ken Dickinson. One of the poems, “Bus to Anywhere,” below, is dedicated to them, with gratitude. Their efforts motivated me to publish this volume of poems written over a ten year span. Order from Amazon…
BUS TO ANYWHERE
for Isaias Nobel and Ken Dickinson
And when there’s no real need to go
anywhere, just the will to be,
drive to the coast
somewhere between Santa Cruz
and San Luis Obispo
in a bus that reads The Inner Journey
on its brow, in unassuming print,
painted with sunflowers, lotus, grape vines,
a rooster, the night sky, Green Man.
Do it on a day when the sunlight
and the breezes are in a dervish,
so that the surf is a wild gallop
of sparkle and foam.
At your other flank, the vultures
will tease their fluttering capes over
hills drunk with green.
When you spot pelicans fishing, stop.
Watch their rowdy plunges,
wings folded as if in a last desperate
prayer. Listen through the roar
for the wet slap of their bodies
meeting the ocean.
You might be hearing the distant thwack
of a poem, like wet jeans on asphalt.
Write the words on the thigh of the bus,
or on its snout, or its broad butt.
Recite them to the wind at the next
stop. Let sounds trip
off your tongue like seeds
or gadflies for the comfortable towns.
Release them, wild breakers,
to open the spirit of a country,
to pound the sleeping sand.
K. Lauren de Boer