Always Got My Feet: Poems About Transportation

Here’s book 10 of the 10 Capstone poetry books I wrote in 2007. If you haven’t already heard about the overall process, and if you’re interested, you can read about it here. After having written 9 poetry collections in one year, I was ready for the final book–to be over. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the writing. I did, tremendously. But the second set of four books went right into December, and I had some December travel going on, and it was just all around hectic. It’s a blur in my mind, to be honest, and I don’t remember all that much about the process of writing it (even though it’s the most recent of the 10 books I’ve shared).

I got to choose the order of the books I worked on, and I put off transportation until last. It just didn’t sound all that exciting, if you know what I mean. I do love boats and find trains and planes fascinating. But cars do nothing for me, and I wasn’t sure whether "things that go" would get pretty boring after a while.

But then I received the images, and there was plenty there to interest me! The editing process itself went really smoothly this time around. After writing the other 3 in this set of 4, I think I was in the groove for having the right voice for the age range. I mean, I did have to revise poems, but most of the tweaks were pretty easy.

Here are a few poems from the collection. NOTE: These are NOT the images from the book. But they’re similar, to give you an idea of the feel of the image that goes with each poem.

Daily Chore I roll along the mountain roads Hold tight to hilly ground My boxy body’s yellow My massive wheels are round I’m boring and predictable But that’s my sacred chore: To get you safely to your school And leave you to explore –Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved	Kevin Rosseel, Morguefile.com The image in the book is a bus on a foggy, mountain road.
Lisa Solonynko, Morguefile.com	Across the Driest Ocean ship of the desert rocks and rolls on sandy waves never leaving shore –Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved
Mono Means One A monocle’s an eyeglass  you hold to just one eye A monotone’s a single sound  no mixing low and high A monolog’s a fancy speech  one person—yak, yak, yak A monorail glides smoothly on  a solitary track –Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved	Wikipedia Commons
Here’s one that didn’t make it into the collection:
Melodi2, Morguefile.com The actual image showed some kind of farm machine plowing or harvesting or something in the rows of the crop.	Break the Pattern   Rows Rows Rows I always March in rows Back Forth Back Forth Plow, till, harvest Always in Rows   But at night  I creep into   Fallow fields       Free to do figure eights    And ocean waves                     And paint curved designs  Under moonlight –Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

The fun part here was the variety. I got to write poems about sailboats, sled dogs, skateboards, monster trucks, taxis, cars, limos, canoes, bare feet, ferries…you name it!

But as fun as it was (as it always is) to write poetry, I melted into a pudle of relief when I was finished with this, the final book out of the set of 10. That was a huge honking project!