Leland Seese

A Walk Home from the School Bus Stop, November 9, 1967, 3:43:34 p.m., PST

Wear the rain,
cow-eyed soft and wet,
kind as flannel. 

Wear it happy
as a worm moving through
its dirt tuxedo. 

Roadside
with no sidewalk.
Rivulet of water 

coursing down
the channel,
shovel-dug. 

Set a single
pine needle to
race the rapids. 

Can it skirt
the tiny logjam
in an eddy? 

Soaked,
untroubled,
follow it 

the length of
several neighbors’
houses. 

Your life
a pine needle,
a giddy eddy,

halfway home.

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Leland Seese's poems appear in RHINO, Juked, rust + moth and many other journals. He and his wife live in Seattle with six foster-adopted and bio children they have launched into adulthood.