-- After Billy Collins’ Aimless Love
This afternoon as I walked the dog down my city street
I felt a flash of anger for the trash-invading raccoons
and later at the parking job of a stranger
who’d smashed fall’s final flowers I’d planted near the curb
In the darkness of the middle of the night
I cursed the car alarm bleating under my window
who awakened my slumber and the cat’s playful urges
and still later felt furious exasperation
at the thumping bass of a car radio before dawn
This is the worst kind of rage, I thought;
without a clear target, without a known enemy,
or earned righteous indignation, without self-satisfaction,
or familiar flashpoints ruining dinner
Animosity toward kitchen ants, traffic jams
and pouring rain without an umbrella.
No outlet, no talking trash about being wronged –
the loathing of being put on hold with sappy musak,
the sand in the bathing suit, the spinach in front teeth,
the endless construction on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
No reconciliation, no learn-from-mistakes, or enlightenment –
just a rush of venom once in a while
for the racoon who had wrestled off the lid
of my neighbor’s smelly trash can
and for the car,
still with all its weight on those dew-soaked daisies.
But my brain is always simmering on the back burner,
ready for the next flash of heat.
After I nursed the mangled daisies
to see the sun again in their curbside bit of green,
I found myself standing at the kitchen sink
Fuming silently at the dirty dishes.