By Now The Red Sun

By Now The Red Sun

By now the red sun rise should be bordering
the outskirts of dark sea.
There should be white ruffled waves
moving just beyond the gray,
far, far, behind me.
By now the arms of the sun have stretched
their fingers into mountain homes,
scalpeling her warm spots
on the floors and walls,
far, far, behind me.
I should be studying this tablet of road
with pencil marks and maps,
notching here and there, an interest,
taking note of future plans.
Instead, I am driving flat lands
and nothing meets my eyes,
but an occasional silo,
and long distances of quiet.
By now, I should have reached a destination,
or circled a new city from the map of my mind,
but there is a xylophone of warm notes
playing lightly on the road,
and I have passed all the atlas points
of where I meant to go.

Reviews

[Terry Collett]

An excellent poem. Touches the right notes for me.

[LJW]

The trip never ends and is never quite what we thought it would be when we set out.

Beautiful imagery in this one, Phibby, with a message that hits home for all.

[Charles]

This poem really captures the esence of a road trip (one of my favorite distractions) - i'm noted for finding short-cuts whenever I drive. Of course, my short-cuts are anything but short - I tell my passengers that short-cuts have nothing to do with time or distance, everything to do with the feeling you describe as 'by now.' There are some great lines in this poem, but I'd quibble with two: by now the arms of the sun has stretched / her fingers into mountain homes. The imagery is great but the subject-verb correspondence is off (arms has? and I suspect 'her' refers to the sun but the way its written the reference seems directed to arms in which case there is a subject-pronoun problem). Maybe the lines could be: the arms of the sun have stretched / their fingers into mountain homes... or something similar. The lines '... a xylophone of warm notes / playing lightly on the road' are really wonderful and set the tone for the entire poem the way I read it. This one goes to my library. :-)

[Jibey]

Somehow the journey never ends... and often it seems the warm sun is only behind... but keep on driving and it comes up ahead and floods the world with warmth and light...

[Ed Hart]

yes, but where is a wonderful place...I think I see your lights, just ahead...and thank you, it is nice to have company on the road...especially yours...