Destination by Gary Glauber

Destination

You smell ocean salt

through open car windows.

You exit long before 
envied places for the rich.

In dreams, you destroy

their serenity with pumping bass lines

that shake their sanity
from a tall wall of black speakers.

Your choice of humble dock

is not much to look at, but still you do,

 

late in the day, searching your soul

amongst precarious piles of used books.

 

The local tales hold no interest;

you seek something to bruise your soul:

a radical philosophy to change
all you have known in life to this point.

You sleep like a peaceful child,

awaken forgetful of problems. 

August holds you in its maw,

hot, restless, eager for why.

Tourist traps and dives

break up long sunny days.

When you finally remember

how to breathe in a way

 

not triggered by anxious anticipation,

it is time to go home

Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist.  His works have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations.

His two collections,Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) andWorth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire(Finishing Line Press), 

are available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from the publishers.