Becoming a passenger
on a trip that I usually drive
opens my eyes to the sides:
I see not as driver,
focused ahead and behind
seldom to sides,
but as rider.

And there on the sides
for the rider to see
are horses grazing
and brilliant green alfalfa
sprouting like flames
and signs I never see, advertising
anything you could want.

Now I want not
to drive,
but to be a passenger,
eyes open
looking to the sides
where there is life.
Not straight ahead and behind
where there is machine after machine.

The sides, oh the sides;
no, you drive.

Years cannot erase
the sad fatigue
in the little boy’s eyes.

I do not know
how he and his mother
and threadbare siblings
stayed warm
in the winter nights
before welfare.

I just wish I could
hug him now.

The cool crowded emptiness
seems hollow:
what we left so full of life
sealed for winter like
a bear in a cave
or a seed in a tomb—
all the intervening history,
rain, blowing dead leaves,
snow, icy winds
silence—
all is unknown.

Grass resurges
like fingernails underground;
we have to cut it before
green owns all this.