Getting There

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Getting There


All this weaving and wagging 

like a wound-up metallic

tail or a trailer bounced off

its ball, your bald head 

wrinkled against the glass 

for a passing glimpse 


of that great Ahead

you hunger for, that planet

just past the of heat shimmer

where the burning in your lead foot 

will be quenched at last 

and all the beers sip cold 

to the bottom of the can, 


that North Georgia Eden

with a hole in it the shape

of your Dodge Ram

into which you vanish

somewhere beyond the black cloud  


we linger in. I saw you

just one other time, about five minutes

later when we sat dead-

still, side by side at the red light 

on Battlefield, the unchanging one 

that doesn’t seem to belong 

but never asks what we think.


We idled next to one another

an eternity while over the shadow 

of a pine-perched crow light broke

both of our windshields.


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