Up and down the desert like a yo yo,
South and north and north and south
Since he began commuting between
Moab and Orem nearly a decade ago,
Now parenting between Salt Lake and Zion,
Always alert for deer and speed traps,
Our road-hard highway Charon goes.
Once he’d thought he was an Odysseus
Of sorts, a capable, pliable, valuable liar
Who had an authentic heart and hearth
Waiting in that bedroom arbor back home.
But he realized at last he he’d never been
Going home, that his home was only his
Back-and-forth. He’d never actually been
To war. He’d never outwitted the monster.
He’d ferried the dead souls of memories,
Clutching their obols, and this one living
Daughter, his own Susan Sto Helit of sorts,
Back and forth, back and forth. The orbit,
The vortex, the thing like a wheel that spins
And collects our souls, the pendulum,
The All-Day Eddy, the day, the year,
The commute, the cyclicity that makes us
Possible within thermodynamic decay,
This was his metier. Others might spin
In tight circles like gears, never jumping
A sideways move out of their well-greased
Grooves. Others might loop the globe
Like lassos slip-knotted to make a noose,
Designed to drag down the strangled world.
Others might escape forever into chaos,
Falcons who’ve slipped the falconer,
But he was none of those, our commuter,
Our wandering planet, our hairy comet,
Our icy dwarf. He pulled into a gas station
And refueled as he watched the blurred stars
Halo his reeling skull. Another farewell
To daughter done, another Orphic cargo
Delivered, time to return to shore. Which shore
Hardly mattered anymore. Back and forth.
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