About Some Nights

What tedious road
will I blunder down tonight?
Will it take me only partway to
the kindergarten room I can't find, to make up
the classes I missed but can't now understand?
I suspect it may peter out
in a corner of the city unknown to me,
but it could also sweep me away in a sudden car
past all the right exits to a highway with no more.
Please don't let it bring me to the house with the basement,
or put me finally by the elevator banks where none will stop
at the floor I need. And by all means,
don't strand me where I will need the telephones
with their tiny keys.
That is the curse of roads: they take you
where you don't intend to go
and then run out,
and at some point you always find yourself on foot,
in a mall whose stores are never the ones you want.

February 23 2016