"Travel Directions" by Joan Siegel

There ought to be a word
for the way you know how to get some place
but don't remember the names of streets
the number of turns and blinking yellow lights
so that if someone asked
you really couldn't say
except you know the road starts out straight
and when it's sunny the branches blink across
the windshield making you want to rub your eyes
then the road turns sharply uphill past a red barn
where a black dog jumps out to race you for a quarter mile
and finally recedes in the mirror like a disappointment
and you remember the road dips downhill
into the shadows of the morning
where you hear Bach's unaccompanied 'cello
and understand what a good fit the 'cello makes
in the hollow of the body
where grief begins and for an indeterminate time
the road winds vaguely past
houses    people    road signs
while time hums in your ear and you remember
the dream you left behind that morning
which had nothing
to do with where
you are going

"Travel Directions" by Joan I. Siegel, from Hyacinth for the Soul. © Deerbrook Editions, 2009.

Two family member independently sent me this poem the other day when Garrison Keillor read it on the February 24, 2010 "Writer's Almanac ." Listen to it here (preceded by birthday announcements, of course). It made me think of the directions to the freeway given to Clark Griswold in "Vacation":

You go half a block down the street...

...and you'll see a Torino
with no wheels on it.

Inside that Torino is my cousin, Jackie.

Tell him that you're my boy,
and that you're lost.
                  
He'll make sure you
get where you're going.
                   
You don't want to know from me.
I'm not from this neighborhood.

I'm from the west side of Chicago,
here on vacation.