Night Drive
On this frosting night
an oldies station flickers
at the threshold of reception.
With an unaccustomed catch a
nd crackle in her lucid voice,
so far away . . . so far away,
Carole King fades in and out.
From another vector
a preacher breaks through,
This world is not our home,
then Carole again, far off,
(is this distance miles or years
or is it something other?)
it would be so fine to see
your face at my door.
As the narrow road veers
north, headlights sweeping
leafless woods, the trees mute
beneath the quarter moon,
voices fade altogether
and static faintly simmers
above the engine’s purr
like the mingled breathing
of countless sleepers sharing
one room tall and wide as night,
the living and the dead, s
o far, so close, so many
souls dreaming in this dark.
Appears in prize-winning
collection Sehnsucht