Road Radio
Hearing a song today, sudden on my car radio,
a song I heard often forty years ago,
when I drove
hour after hour, day after day, night after night
across the continent,
thinking, as I did then,
about love or what I thought love was
and not knowing, really,
who I was or might be,
but just driving, driving, driving,
and playing over and over again in my mind
that irritating, inescapable tune,
and wondering, as I did then, why I needed to get somewhere
and wondering if I even knew
where I would be.
• • •
Joseph Stanton’s books of poems are Things Seen, Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art, A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban Oahu, Cardinal Points: Poems on St. Louis Cardinals Baseball, and What the Kite Thinks. His other sorts of books include Looking for Edward Gorey, The Important Books and Stan Musial: A Biography. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Harvard Review, New Letters, Antioch Review, New York Quarterly, and many other magazines. He is a Professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He occasionally teaches poetry workshops, such as the “Starting with Art” workshops he has taught recently at Poets House (in New York City) and at the Honolulu Museum of Art.