Member-only story
Road Work
a poem about driving, sort of
The first thing you do is get in.
Your license and the manual
won’t help you here.
Throw them out.
Start the engine
and let its life move
you out onto the road,
along with everyone else.
The first intersection
will be familiar, one
you’ve turned into so often
you know its angle by heart.
Pass it by.
It will be a long journey,
the span of a swollen second
pulling the mountains into
bridges arcing themselves
from one state to another.
Speed will take its own shape,
make its own hand to hold
you safe against the blaze of lights
smearing outside the window.
Continue in a straight line
even as the traffic thins.
The earth will crack open then,
yawn in a terrible fissure.
This need not concern you.
Your indifference will lift you,
move you in a smooth arc upward.
Let the landscape retreat back
to your imagination where,
you realize, it’s been all along.
__________
Copyright 2009 Marguerite Floyd all rights reserved
This poem first appeared in Everyone’s Daughter, 2009
