Drive All Night


Simply set your cruising speed at sixty-eight,
stick to the Interstate, and you’ll arrive
like morning’s minion, pal—your hair
wind-flattened on one side, pulse walloping
at optimum efficiency, tight schedule intact.
Just repeat after me: avoid small towns.

That’s right, eschew those towns,
friend, those glomerations of eight
or nine hundred rubes named Dwayne, intact
in their dullness. Their collective aim: to arrive
at the local wienie-works on time—hair
greased, molars brushed, haunches walloping.

It’s true, of course, that your own walloping
windshield wipers could turn some of these towns
(for all their Wal-Marts and parking meters and Hair
Chalets) into vapor-lit versions of eight-
eenth century streetscapes. Especially if you arrive
under canopies of ancient elms, all intact.

And if a row of bungalows, equally intact,
happens to feature one lace curtain walloping
crazily in the night breeze, you might arrive
at certain conclusions about small towns.
You might even come within a hair
of staying for supper. Even if you just ate.

Maybe you find a chrome diner, circa 1958,
with pictures of Charlie Chaplin tacked
to the walls. A waitress with long copper hair
grins and takes your order: a walloping
plate of beans and ham, followed by the town’s
finest apple pie. Then the locals start to arrive:

       Where’s your girl, Dwayne? You got a riv-
       al, buddy? You just been eight-
       balled? Well, here’s what the town’s
       been saying—she ain’t what you call intact,
       boy. Broad needs a good walloping
       to keep her zipped up and out of your hair.

—Fade out. No diner, no copper hair, no small towns.
Only those walloping tires and the hum of your V-8.
Drive all night, friend. Arrive intact.





The 84th Street Care Home
​
                                      If you’re not ready for a nursing home,
                                      live where you belong—in a comfortable
                                      house in a pleasant neighborhood.
                                                                                              --Elder Group Home listing
We live in this house.
It fits right in.
Its windows face
the long afternoons.

It fits right in,
and no one would guess
the long afternoons
mean nothing to us

and no one would guess
that the other houses
mean nothing to us— 
except for the little boys

that the other houses
gather in a dusk.
The little boys
think we’re ghosts

gathering at dusk
to frequent their dreams.
They think we’re ghosts
when our night visits seem

too frequent. Their dreams
make them shudder--
our night visits seem
like shadows, wavering but persistent.

Make them shutter
their windows, face
their own shadows. Wavering but persistent,
we live in this house.





Crickets: a Late Chorale


As if Boulez had raised his arms
and readied his baton,
the crickets poise themselves to play
their autumn song.

Soprano saxophones invade
the saturated air
with rounds of semi-quavers, shrill
against the ear.

Repetitive cacophony
becomes the leitmotif--
they know their time to reproduce
is growing brief.

And we who listen will do one
of several likely things:
deplore the deviousness of time,
or fold our wings,

or open them impulsively,
chirping with all our mights
for one more spell—or maybe two--
of red-hot nights.