Rubber-Necking

RUBBER-NECKING

Eyes on new construction 

beside the freeway, and don’t

we always get what we want 

in the end, if only to find 

our expectations twisted 

in the wreck? Where we look we list,

as wet St. Peter's sea steps

can attest, starting to slip.

This is the root predicament

of teen drivers with attention deficit 

disorder, loose-eyed lovers, 

and really all the others

who fell down the well-

intentioned lie the mothers tell,

believing it themselves: look, don’t touch. 

This doesn’t help us much, 

whose eyes have fingers with a reach. 

What, then, of our innate ache

to hold the whole, and where to set our gaze?

If inward, then it’s down a ways, 

well-past the normal scope of view.  

If outward, looking at, then through.