Orient Lodge

The Daily Commute

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/28/2015 - 20:18

I remember driving the interstate for my daily commute
from a town that was not my home
to a consulting job I knew would not last.

I didn’t know my neighbors
or anyone in the local shops.

The commuters, all behind their own steering wheels,
were as foreigners to me.

What were their lives like
in these suburban towns
their kids in the local schools
their wives waiting for them?

It all seemed so repetitious
as bland as the TV dinners.

Yet if you could get past the veneer
you would find pathos;
the dying father,
the deranged uncle,
the drifting brother.

If you could get past the pathos
you would find the hidden passions;
amateur radio,
model rocketry,
or some rare endurance sport.

A quarter of a million miles later,
I look out my car window on the daily commute
at the young kid who must wonder what my life is like.

Keep traveling, I think.
You’ll eventually find out.

(Categories:

Poetry

)

#llamadrama and #thedress

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/27/2015 - 20:58

As the cold and snow lingers on
and spirits sag,
we, as a nation,
seek new distractions.

There have always been cat videos
or at least as long
as there’s been videos streaming online.
Their brief humor is therapeutic.

Yet as things look more grim,
we need something more potent:
therapist llamas on the lam.

Is it their cute frolicking that captures our hearts?
Their freedom? Something else?
Is it enough, or do need even more,
like a dress
that no one can agree the color of.

How do we see things?
How do we think?
How are we different?
How are we the same?

Soon enough, the dismal humdrums will return
but for now, we can smile at llamas
and think about perception,
at least for a moment.

(Categories:

Poetry

)

Ice Dams

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/26/2015 - 21:21

It isn’t the cold that causes ice dams
nor the warmth for that matter.
It isn’t even the snow piling up on the roof.

When the first days of bitter cold come,
we hunker down.
We can outlast the cold.

We worry about the snow piling up on the roof.
Will the structure support the weight?
We read about barns collapsing.

Then, the warmth comes.
The snow and ice melts off portions of the driveway.
We talk about how balmy it feels
even though it is barely above freezing.

On the roof, the snowmelt heads to the gutters.
Some of it becomes beautiful icicles.
Some of it freezes on the edge of the roof.

It isn’t the cold that causes ice dams
nor the warmth for that matter.
It is that back and forth across the freezing line
as snow melts, pools up, and freezes again
causing unseen damage.

Yet that same back and forth
between freezing and thawing
is what makes the sap flow
into giant networks of tubing
that have replaced the old sap buckets.

Soon the sugar houses will be boiling sap
bringing additional sweetness
to the end of a long cold bitter winter
as we repair the damage from ice dams.

(Categories: