In the night’s quiet, the long-drawn
hum of the freeway a good mile off,
I’m still the beginner I was
when I first stood in this room
and heard the road’s come-and-go
song through the open window, words
in an unlearned tongue, lost on me
like talk on a newborn. But the lyrics
must be all about us—those groaned
sonorants and growled bassos, whistles,
hisses and harsh stops crossing the dark.
Yes, those are our wheels peeling
the blue sustains from that fat stone
string stretching the length
of the city’s backbone, our urges
pumping the pedals, pressing fumes
out the pipes’ mouths. As a man weaves
home from his drinks and hapless flirts,
his radials lift a refrain
behind him off the cement. Another
man grits his teeth, guns it, left lane
a gauntlet of noble-gas-lit regrets,
and his speed raises a throaty question
for whoever might listen. I hear it,
but who can translate? It’s a mineral
language, from inside us but strange.
Under a span a tent-dweller turns
and turns to his tall arbor’s drones.
His lungs and liver absorb and emanate
ancient complaints. And words
we can’t pronounce toss past my ears
unparsed, lost like a radio host’s
in the spit of a solar flare. Barbarous
music, though it’s softer from here,
a drift from those gears and pistons
driven by souls strapped in their hulls,
low howls out of hot-breath’d flutes
rattling the jumpers and spares. We never
say or sing for ourselves what we do,
our speech like the whine and sputter
our engines make while we motor
we don’t know where, no reverse . . .
Mom and Dad downstairs, my gods
dividing my world, sharp words
dulled by the tumble up through the air.
Give it years—our own kids tucked in,
keys in my grip, I’m out the door,
whatever’s been said. Trouble lies
in a gut rumble, a crankcase churn,
a winding in the spine to propel
this human machine toward nothing
in mind. I can still feel my hands
on the wheel, between the lane’s glowing
dashes, keeping it 5 to 10 over
the limit, the bebop turned up
to a clarion blare in the steady crash
of wind through the windows wide open,
when I was among the night song’s
writers, one of the lost mad men
hurtling clueless no closer to love,
burning a roared prayer up and down
the interstate through town again, no
hint what the words were even then.
