Poetry
Honda Odyssey 2001
Eric Jensen
When I was a child, I drove the night shift with my father
He and my mother would split shifts at the hospital.
Right before bed, he would bathe me, put me in silver striped pajamas and load me into an old green minivan.
As a child, I had nightmares of being in the van, in the back and the engine flaring to life
Driverless we would begin to drift into the open road,
I would clamor to the front, but short legs cannot reach brake pads. We would never crash in these dreams; it was just the fear of crashing that petrified me.
Reality is not as cruel as our dreams are, it is bitter in a different way.
We would drive across empty streets, past the bakery, past the empty school yard
And across the foothills, ravaged by the piercing glare of stop lights through bleary eyes.
I still remember
The way the light shot off in one hundred different directions when I squinted through the glass on rainy nights.
My father was a gentle man, who saw the stoplights for what they were
Messengers, providing light across dark city roads, yearning for their hue to find something slightly mystic, in a young boys squinted and tired eyes.
He and my mother would split shifts at the hospital.
Right before bed, he would bathe me, put me in silver striped pajamas and load me into an old green minivan.
As a child, I had nightmares of being in the van, in the back and the engine flaring to life
Driverless we would begin to drift into the open road,
I would clamor to the front, but short legs cannot reach brake pads. We would never crash in these dreams; it was just the fear of crashing that petrified me.
Reality is not as cruel as our dreams are, it is bitter in a different way.
We would drive across empty streets, past the bakery, past the empty school yard
And across the foothills, ravaged by the piercing glare of stop lights through bleary eyes.
I still remember
The way the light shot off in one hundred different directions when I squinted through the glass on rainy nights.
My father was a gentle man, who saw the stoplights for what they were
Messengers, providing light across dark city roads, yearning for their hue to find something slightly mystic, in a young boys squinted and tired eyes.
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Eric Jensen is a recent college graduate from the University of Utah with Bachelors degrees in English and Communications. Eric's first passion is sports writing. His blog The drama of it all, a sports blog - Your source for the cure to life, sports. A collection of thoughts. Written and edited by Eric Jensen (dramaofitallasportsblog.com) has been on the internet for 8 years, he's also been featured as a writer for Salt Lake Community College and Utah's school newspapers as a women's basketball beat writer. Eric has also had his work published through KSL Sports, a local news organization affiliated with NBC in Salt Lake. Eric's podcast EndZone Podcast | Podcast on Spotify has been going on for six NFL seasons. Eric's love of Poetry started in high school and was fostered by some amazing English teachers. He has been a published poet at every level of education he has been through for that schools literary magazine and is now proud to be published for the first time publicly through WordSwell. Eric currently works in higher education but is always looking for more writing opportunities!
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