Wanderlust Poem by Sonny Rainshine

Glancing down from his aerie, cityward,
outward, toward towers drawfing squat shops
minaturized by distance and contrast,
he observed how like the intricate tunnels
of a schoolboy’s model ant farm
the sprawling freeway down below seemed,

and how all things seemed to be thrusting outward,
upward, toward some indefinite space,
any space but here. Likewise he envisioned
his own coursing blood like a highway,
looping in cloverleafs, passing over, passing under,
transporting platelets, minerals, nutrients,
like automobiles, like ants: all travelers.

Nothing and no-one stays in place!
How I long to be a passenger
in one of those cars down there,
bound somewhere, bound to nothing,
tunneling to freedom, my few belongings,
like the constituents of the blood within me,
in the backseat sustaining me,
with the only thing on my mind
the next white stripe
extracted from the throbbing night
by probing headlights—
I’d be a happy vagabond.

Then, glancing inward, into the life
he’d chosen, into familiarity and routine,
he looked away from the persistent momentum
of things, from man’s ancient
instinct to roam, to pull up stakes,
this curiosity to see what’s around the corner.
And as he fixed his supper
and prepared for the evening,
he luxuriated in the warm sensation of home-thoughts,
as these thoughts propelled through his being
like all things in motion.