Victoria Bosch Murray – Traveling Mercies

Traveling Mercies

 

Let the train be there.

Let it be the right train.

Let there be a seat.

Let these things be unsaid.

 

Movement is relative:

a plane forms a contrail like a mower

on a Saturday morning, like memory,

or time. A finch is a common bird,

 

it will nest anywhere—

between morning sleep, no

alarm, awake to sun on granite

 

ledge, snails in the hedges

alone, and theBostonof

 

sweet buns, bums

and business suits, spicy

sausage and onions,

 

spring sun and sin

on the Common in June.

There’s no such thing

 

as a trip to nowhere.

If a clock is time, what is a map?

How to know if it’s you or the other person.

 

Let sunset be graffiti in chain link.

Let a triple-decker be the color of birth.

Let the price be mercy—

 

A wrong turn can be meditation.

A coin can be the whole fountain.

 

Green

 

It hits her like a slap, a stone, stars, stinging;

it hits her like a bounced check, addition,

fees, a broken sofa spring, feathers escaping,

a necessity; it hits her like hunger, a house

with no furniture, the family car towed

out of town, the family cat taken

to the farm. (She believed in the farm

for years.) Hits her like a stiff hug, a half

kiss, a cold cheek, a hey, how are you long lost,

on the street, at the T, in a bar; hits her

like the first beetle on the basil,

the snow pea gone to seed, purple peppers,

wine to vinegar, a lump in the breast,

a second read on the x-ray. It hits her

like a moving van in front of the house,

everything on the lawn, a double mattress

strapped to the back, two bikes, redwood lawn chairs

wrapped in blue. Everything fits, hits

like a flat tire, alone, fifteen bucks

to the freeway bandit to switchout the spare.

Hits her like static, bad shocks, the needle on E,

the next exit57 miles. It hits like loving

Elvis, like knowing all the words. Like green,

like gone, like leaving, like left.

 

Victoria Bosch Murray’s poetry has appeared in American Poetry Journal, Field, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Inch, Salamander,Tar River Poetry, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook of poems, On the Hood of Someone Else’s Car, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2010. She is a contributing editor at Salamander and has an M.F.A in poetry from Warren Wilson College.