Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Token Poem

Pity the poor tollboth attendant. There we are on Saturday in lines of maybe ten cars deep waiting impatiently to hand her our three tokens and continue driving north to somewhere pleasant: maybe a lake, maybe mountains, maybe Vermont. The seconds become at least a minute. Why the delay? At last we hand her the toll, say a pleasant thanks, and head for the Franconia Notch. Meanwhile she gets to spend the entire sunny Saturday cooped up in her booth envying our expectant faces. Or does she?
Tokens

The traffic pays her never mind
before depositing their thanks
and swinging for the mountaintops.
She doesn’t think about their ranks
of hands enjoying Saturday
—everyone is faraway
from where they want to be. She yearns
for immortality or gloves;
that fool in his Infiniti
imagines that his girlfriend the planet loves
his great round splendor, but forsooth—
the toll collector knows the truth.


copyright Gregory Perry 2004
Oh, and for the record, I drive a Honda.

3 comments:

Loren said...

Okay, I can see that Blogger recognizes me because I used to have a blog there in 2001? This is a little frightening, but at least I see that I can comment as "Loren," "Anonymous" or as a "different user.

Egad, I may be having a senior moment here. I remember I wanted to say something, but I've forgotten what, distracted by the very purple new surroundings and a totaly alien commenting system.

I was going to say something how i really like the first lines of your poem but I'm having a hard time recognizing any lines in the jumble below.

I think Blogger needs a little more work on their commenting system, but I'm sure that's not what I originally stopped by to say.

son rivers said...

Loren

Thanks I think. And I just noticed that Blogger doesn't format the posting correct down below. You might be right. I like the fact that the comments go on the the post page, but there are some bugs. To Haloscan or Blogger, that is the comment.

Loren said...

Nice, at least I can see that there's a garbage can by my comment so that I can reconsider what i said earlier.

I'm sure that readers will get used to this comment form with a little more experience. If it really bugs me, I'll open two windows so I can see the original article while I'm commenting.