Sunday Quest

i left 

     my five-walled room 

         because I couldn’t 

           find a poem there. 

 

it wasn’t 

   tucked between 

    tissue-thin 

        bible pages 

 

or sharing the dust on a windowsill 

   with cigarette packs and movie tickets. 

 

it wasn’t hidden  

  in the booming voice  

   of a TV preacher 

    or buzzing on my radio 

     with “breakfast with the beatles.” 

 

i searched for it 

    along sunny springtime streets 

            aglow 

     with skirt swirls  

               and children shrieks. 

 

there is a wide deep river  

where I live;   

         i looked for my poem  

         beneath its mud-brown waters;  

      its lazy flowing might  

      washed poetic dreams away. 

 

i caught a bus, hoping to ride it  

                       to my poem;  

             on a seat across from me,  

           a man in a cloud-colored suit  

         eyed my search  

                    behind spread pages  

                  of the sunday literature section. 

 

a thin blonde page-boy woman  

muttered what might’ve been my poem  

                    into her cellphone. 

 

     i disembarked into a steamy day,  

     still missing my poem;  

    a voluptuous voice,  

                 tropical like ethiopia  

                             shouted  

                               muffled words;  

                             they were no poem; she was merely hawking 

 

-David Harris 

information about New Signature, a Washington DC tech solutions and consulting firm

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