subtext

I miss living in central Austin, except for the people

and the traffic, (fourth worst in the country according

to  The New York Times, right behind Los Angeles

for Christ’s sake), and of course, all the noise from all

the people, who would have thought death had undone

so many, as Eliot cribbed from Dante, and the traffic

makes me want to scream like a Siamese in heat

desperate for a mate. But what can I do? I just want

to see the Monet to Turner exhibit downtown

at the Blanton before it leaves to some other artsy-fartsy

city much farther away than Austin, the only town in Texas

I can stomach, liberal oasis that it is.  So I jump into

the Honda, hybrid of course, and head down the interstate

to take in a little culture, as the owner of Shakespeare

and Co. accused me of doing in Paris thirty years ago

when I didn’t respond fast enough to his overly interested

queries as to why a skinny Texas boy was wandering

around Europe for months looking  at pictures

hanging in the Louvre and other fancy-pants

museums which seemed to be in every city

all across Europe no matter how small. But that

is neither here nor there now, the Blanton is

the Blanton and right here, and Paris is so

far away, that I gird my loins, so to speak,

and brave the lethargic interstate’s quandaries

in search of somewhere beautiful to be.