Oh, Pioneer

Your car has been parked
off Highland
for weeks,
one tire flat,
and now
a parking boot
crippling this rusted hulk.

All summer you kept
pumping hope
into that one soft wheel
but it’s autumn now.

Take what belongs to you,
leave that ferrous lump
and jump a bus

to anywhere that’s better-
better than this chickenshit
day-to-day we wade through.

Aldous Huxley was only half right
because this isn’t that brave a world
and it’s certainly not new.

Who knew which of us would have to be the pioneer,
but I’ll keep part of you here
if you take a part of me along

And before too long
I’ll be right beside you.

(appears in A Gift of Wings, published by
Perspectives in memory of Kristen Biss.)