I think my response to today’s Poetic Asides post ended up as #479. The prompt was “landmark”; I snuck a peek at it before church, and even jotted down some ideas while in my pew…

From Poem A Day Drafts

…and, two Word documents and eight attempts at a title later, this is what it’s gonna be for the night:

Here We Go ‘Round the 440 Loop

The spires of the Batman Building to my left
tell me that I’ve once again gone astray,
auto-piloting my car to Green Hills
instead of the museum at which I was supposed
to meet you ten minutes from now. It’s hard
not to feel like a joke when this happens: if I
were a cartoon, I’d be Charlie Brown’s foot
connecting yet again with nothing but air
and mockery. And yet I don’t mind
making my girlfriend laugh when I explain
the photos she wants to see of the plum tree
three blocks north will be stuck on my phone
until I reload the BlueTooth software
that’s on the CD I happened to file
somewhere other than where I looked last night.
There’s no diploma from Superheroine U.
shining from my walls, and yet I can’t help
feeling I should be able to help myself
from and over this kind of stupid —
to hurdle the rote and routine in a single bound
and hurl myself headlong into any darkness,
trusting my heightened senses to haul me through
and restore what I can to a story we can bear.

– pld