Human Interest Story

Jay Ruzesky
From:   Painting The Yellow House Blue. Concord, Ontario: House of Anansi Press, 1994.

                                Determined to see baby, girls, 11, drive
                                10 hours with only atlas for guide.
                                --Associated Press Headline

For two weeks they
pinched money from their folks
a buck at a time for gas and expenses.
Piled clothes on the seat to see
over the dash and
took off like innocent fugitives
tired of pleading their case.

The idea of them!
One leaning inches
from the windshield into
the wiper's desperate gestures
her shoulders hunched,
small hands strangling the curve of the wheel
as if a circus performer bending pipe.
The other straining against
failing light, looking for signposts.
The thought of them
as they arrive at their destination
the older sister at the door
expecting her parents
to unfold smiling from the car.

Her face when she realizes
they have emerged alone, alive somehow
from the death-chute highways.

A guardian angel? St. Christopher? "atlas?"
Some miscellaneous spirit.
These two girls, 11, peer over the edge
of a crib murmuring:
"Oh my god. Oh my god."

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Jay Ruzesky's works copyright © to the author.