Vacations

August 29 Writing Prompt for Smorgas Bard

 

Vacations can’t revive

lethargic souls-

spend ten hours on a tour bus

in 100 degrees traveling

through the karst pyramids

and emerald canyons

of southern Mexico,

sitting next to a whiny adult child

and you will rethink

your views on the human soul,

what Dante’s 8^th circle of hell

was really like, and your chances

of getting away with murder

if you can make it look

like an accident. That- and

black market goods-

are what Mexico is for,

anyway.

 

I will never understand

people on planes

with the window seat,

first order of business,

close the shade-

never seeing the sun dogs

and the way the Mississippi

glints like a line

drawn in antique gold

calligraphy ink

and what a thunderstorm

looks like from above.

I saw a UFO once,

over Texas, of course,

It was Texas. I wanted it

to abduct my seatmate

but alas, he chattered on

about his mother’s dry

cleaning business in New York,

and how the food sucks

in every city but his own.

 

Vacations can’t revive

lethargic souls; so many people

board a bus through

Paradise on earth and

only see that the road has

a lot of curves;

it never occurs to them

to ask, why so many poor

families sell their

kids’ childhoods

to serve us the things

on buses

we complain about

being better back home

in Kansas. If you have sold

your soul to comfort,

you cannot buy it back

on a mission trip

to East Africa.