Morning on the El Tracks-Gertrude Van Dyke

I’m asking myself for directions,
a task made obsolete
by years of psychotherapy
saying you have no direction
you do not receive from others. No, wait,
I’m wrong, as usual—you don’t care.
That’s how I ended up waiting
to be run over by clicking cars
of people who don’t bother.

I’m waiting for someone to
come and suck the platitudes
out of the eerie blue daylight
with a lot of rain. That’s what
I woke up for, and I’m waiting
for it to change into the usual
sunny day that the fog burns into.

There’s a story to be told here,
of staring off into fog without finding
the sun. If that’s it. There’s a waiting
silhouette, waving her feet in the shade.
sort of sad in the Kerouac sense, perhaps
a tiny bit clichéd. I know you’re going
to ask Why because you always do, and
I say, with a smile, I’m not going
to tell you, shouting it from my perch to
scare away the nesting birds. I set the scene;
you stare at the worn bottoms of my sandals
as if the answer were written there.