Why Thinking About Taxis Makes Me Sad

I could never trust an Uber or a Lyft,

and I have my own car anyhow.

But should I have the need, I’d prefer

a taxi with bright colors or checkers

and the wide, bulbous car body, as if

other car bodies or frames are underneath,

so the taxi can shed one, like a cicada does,

and move on to its next destination or passenger,

someone waiting streetside and almost desperate

for a ride and to get somewhere safely

in a city where the passenger knows nobody

and needs to get somewhere that may look like

a home for one or two nights and where

there may be the potential for a face that

might make softer the darkness and the unknown

of an unfamiliar city or maybe even someplace

in the country where without a full moon or any

moonlight, the darkness feels like a seal of wax

on the back of an envelope that will never be

cracked by anyone I know or love but only by

a stranger in the night behind a desk with keys

hanging on hooks on the wall and he can’t or won’t

find mine, so I keep walking in the dark

in some cold warehouse district like those

on TV where they find the dead or barely

alive bodies in an old tractor trailer, or

in some cornfield just beyond the edge of the lights

on the highway where the arms of those I love

have become the stubble left long

after the harvest, and the sun

has gone down on my life.

 

Buzz Lightyear Won’t Forgive You,

nor will the ceramic cat

with the Felix tick-tock eyes.

It’s the people far down

on the street that matter, those

we can barely see for our being

so far up in this silver skyscraper

that makes us forget and not care

about who’s below.

 

But we can get close again, and the people

can get large, so we don’t forget who and what

they are, so they don’t have to flee

when the hammer drops and the sparks fly.

 

Doug Funnie we know

is your hero, so quiet and unassuming.

He knows what’s important: the weave

of the living room rug, the fine-enough cotton

sheets that make up your bed, the doctor

who once made house calls and popped

the cork at your wedding.

 

These are the people who call

your name, who will pat your shoulder

when you need it, who know that magna tiles

gather even more color in the late morning

sun on the porch floor where toys tell

the stories, where playtime is the

supreme value that we should talk about

in church and political speeches,

so we never forget what it’s like

to be pushed on a swing, to have the touch

on the back that keeps us going,

so we don’t forget that hand and those

fingers when we let go and throw ourselves

into the air, assured of the balance

the arms will find and gather

to stick the landing and make sure

the heart is everywhere

the blood flows and may want or think

to go.

 

Pete Follansbee

Pete Follansbee likes writing in the early morning dark and lives in Richmond, Virginia, a good place to survive climate change and political uncertainty. This summer, Pete’s poems have appeared online in Humana Obscura, the Rockvale Review, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. In the past, Pete’s poems have been finalists in contests and have found publication in The North American Review, Barrow Street, The New Guard, About Place, New Millenium Writings, and elsewhere. An MFA graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, Pete was a T.A. for poet Tim Seibles at the summer 2017 edition of The Writer’s Hotel and a Faculty Assistant for their 2021 Virtual Poetry Weekend. And this coming June 2026, Pete looks forward to being a Director’s Assistant at The Writer’s Hotel in Maine. Pete has a website of his published poems at petefollansbee.com.