Poem
There’s always room for another rose in the garden, Rosanna
Arquette said to her sister Patricia
This driver, making the commute an anxious scene, bus going
nowhere &
Infeasible construction making the clarification purpose
worse—
It’s still Oakland, these trucks are not metaphors and there’s no
revolution on the scene
My sense of urgency is lost to time lost
In a cubicle
I’m a high-powered cultural executive, he said
Me too
From and on the outside
Inside of course this doesn’t matter
My guru supports me
In my efforts to achieve an insoluble freedom, a future
The guru is inside me
The yogis find this truth to be self-evident
And revealed
The objectionists, the culturevationists, they want a balance to
measure my product
There is none
All hypocrisy stops here
And then starts again
Begins with me
The doctor says
Copyright © 2015 by Suzanne Stein. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 4, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The Transbay bus I take from Oakland to San Francisco every weekday passes the Port of Oakland, where more than two million shipping containers, and the ships and trucks to traffic them, pass through each year. Infrastructure, ‘far as the eye can see.’”
—Suzanne Stein