You speed past the exit ramp
flying in overdrive,
your 70 mph wake
blowing wishbones snapped short
of dream into dust yellowed by July sun.
Drawn as human to our magnetic stutter,
your hands grip the wheel,
shaping your transit under sky-scrapers
as jack-hammers cube the air.
Witness the bland ease of ambivalence
long after moonset has cinched the sleeping faces
of so many sheep
ocean shelf into trench.
You hum along to the sax anthem
spun every morning by the FM D-J
stationed before dawn
to smooth the rush,
conduct the transit,
java cup in one hand,
voice blooming into mike,
rolling disparate carts through fog
as the work-week lays blue-prints
over the tunnels of dreams.
Coal-encrusted miners surface and re-surface
hungry to see
bighorn threading along rock edges,
fur lit by sunrise,
their deep eyes reflecting
orchards and corn,
heron and robins.
Charles Thielman‘s poems have appeared in The Pedestal, Gargoyle, Poetry365, The Criterion [India], Poetry Salzburg [Austria], Gangway, Windfall [Oregon], Muse [India], Battered Suitcase, Poetry Kanto [Japan], Open Road, Poetry Kit and Pastiche [England], Belle Reve, Tiger’s Eye and Rusty Nail.