Inspired
“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose”
― Langston Hughes
Today a poem surrendered to my thoughts. I found it early
this morning while driving 72 miles per hour in the middle
lane down 91 South – just twelve minutes from the Massachusetts border.
It weaved its way through my mind as I got caught up
in a brief clutter of traffic just before exit 47E. It distracted
me into a daze as pissed off drivers behind me became
angry poems – the stories that bitch and complain when read
just the right way – and sleepy truck drivers became dream poems
weaving between the lines of life awake enough to make
the safe poems nervous. It was one of those days
that everything around me became a canvas and I, the artist,
turned aspects of nothing into masterpieces of creativity.
I found the poetry in the way the birds taunted the sky
with elegant forms of ballet, drifting in a summer wind
freshly admired by the duality of tempered clouds blanketing
a half hidden sun. I could’ve chosen to allow today
to filter in misery – I could’ve flowed with the traffic
and paid no mind to the immigration of trees that have jumped
the borders of nature onto city lines of beeping horns
and the raging hormones of adolescent architecture. Today
this poem became part of me before the day had chance to yawn.
Today I was inspired
driving down the highway of life.
© 2012
Tarringo T. Vaughan
