Litany from the Driver’s Seat

When I was fifteen I learned, from the passenger

seat of an interchangeable Toyota,

that driving was a game you could win

if you never stopped. Since then I had become

a secondary vehicle, rarely pushing thirty

on a residential. But the night I remembered

the game of not stopping I didn’t sleep, just tore

my eyes open to the road and my left hand

through the air like I knew where the highway

stopped and the sky began.

Now I am all the silent motion; the slow

and the fast; the constant; the fingers tracing

the wind; the wind tracing the fingers; I am

the crystallized remnants of speed scattered

among the smell of burnt rubber; I am the expanding

of the suburbs, the crawling of the commute,

and the California stop; I am the squirrel

running across the road and the crow

flying from under the wheel; I am always

here; I am the steady death of the deer

off the shoulder; I am the lonely pace of life

and that massive earthly falling after.