Challenging Poetry

coming home from the total eclipse

coming home from what my
nephew's ten year vocabulary
describes as the best
four minutes and two seconds
of his life, traffic,

terrible traffic turning the bridge
home into a damp, raining parking lot
that makes molasses look fast,
until the last seventeen miles
is an hour long, and the air thickens
with a fog of frustration
and annoyance,

punctuated by the swipe
of wiper blades and gentle breathing
of my nephew, so excited by
the day that he is drifting
in the reaction and the quiet,
until he gasps, his eyes wide
and pointing

to the rainbow, stretching across
the sky, a new wonder
at the end of a long
delay.

April 8—Delay (any kind)