William Wordsworth: Parking Attendant, Weehawken, NJ

~ qbit 
Lincoln might be in the Bardo –
where spirits wait bewildered
in their Rubber Room souls –

But William Wordsworth is outside 
in my parking lot
waltzing with language and cars –

Foxtrots of Kias, nouns, and verbs,
Fords and Acuras tango with adjectives –
insensate and doleful dip and turn,
 
While the drivers, like inmates
of ballroom dance class, trip on overgrown
iambic feet, hoofing to Glen Miller.

In Spring he will gently blow adverbs and romance
into pistils of foxglove,
until magnolias faint in jealousy.

For him, Death is no purgatory, no dotage, 
he is as lucid as yellow,
as sharp as a blackbird quill plucked in flight,

Far less bewildered than I
between this world and the next –
if he writes of eternity, it must be so –

Poems to guide us
with the half-life of Uranium 235 –
fissile at room temperature –

Nuclear reactions of sunrise
breaking like egg yolk over the hillside –
Ten thousand daisies runny with light.

For Shay’s Word Garden and TSM

23 thoughts on “William Wordsworth: Parking Attendant, Weehawken, NJ”

  2. Oh man, you killed it! You had me at the fantastic title, and then it never lost a step (ahem) after that. Inmates of ballroom dance class! You’ve outdone yourself with this one, qbit. Looks like another atomic egg sunrise la la la.

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    1. Ahahaha! So glad you liked it. The nuclear eggs bit came to me in the shower this morning, and apparently I yelled out “Oh yeah!” and my wife came to see what was wrong, if I’d slipped and broken the yolk of my head.

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    1. Thank you! “Turn in 6” – ah yes, I remember that. We took ballroom dancing lessons for a while, but we were just so bad at it. When we quit, the teacher was clearly relieved we weren’t coming back. I think that came out in my “inmates” line, LOL!

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  9. those last two stanzas, nice peak and close. and i can picture wordsworth happy as a clam just parking cars, all of his burdens with life, love society and so on, done and over with, live a kind of simple zen routine. great movement in this, you do that alot in your poems, keep things moving (others forget to do that, even wordsworth) well done my friend.

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    1. Hey, thanks. On the “keeping things moving” sometimes I think I move too quickly, too many pivots and jukes, too fast. Not sure I always give the reader enough time to catch up before the next lateral pitch of the ball.

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      1. i know exactly how you feel, i worry about the same thing, i rush from image to image and place to place. most of the poetry out there is kind of sleepy (in my opinion) and nothing wrong with that, but then most readers are not accustom to a faster pace. personally, i can keep up, if that help you at all, i think they move perfectly

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  11. Gosh you started out with a bang with that tittle and kept it going…such a creative piece.
    “But William Wordsworth is outside
    in my parking lot
    waltzing with language and cars –” Wish I had written that

    Liked by 1 person

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  13. poets and writters never really die – they live on in spirit through their words and you certainly made that clear here!

    Liked by 1 person

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