Driving Westward
Age, grief, perversities
of lovers and investments
vanish in the exhalation
of our speed or, hydrocarbon
ghosts, hover beyond tinted glass.
Points of departure and destination
are folded away in paper maps
when we enter the 4-lane fairyland
swinging like bells
for some nameless jubilee.
Who has not known as driver
before the bright controls
this hubris of the freeway
this rapture of the horizontal
plunge into receding sanity?
Here at our slightest touch
musicians hanging in the wind
spend, spend their sweetness
into our cells of chrome and foam
our lives their opera.
The slow God shepherding
his clouds across blue pastures
dissolves before our eyes
the land unrolls like doomsday
and all our coffins fly into the sun.
-Virginia Hamilton Adair
