Today’s poem is made of long lines, one long line per stanza. It’s not a prose poem, but is occupies that space which straddles the prose poem and the more formally delineated poem. A poem made of long lines allows a sort of musing that can’t always fit into a more metered, tighter poem.
Commute
The fog so thick today it grays out even the greens of the last autumn grass, and blocks—apparently—the distance judgement
of the fool who through twenty-three miles drove practically in my back seat and refused to pass me on the country roads
as if by creeping up he could speed me away from him, make time pass faster or enter some wormhole the road
followed so that distance folded up, surrendered itself to his headlights. A Jeep. He almost hit me when I slowed
then stopped behind a cattle truck which may or may not have been packed full—being foggy I couldn’t see
and only knew there was darkness between the fog-slick metal slats—and darkness and fog absorbed all tire screeches
which his Jeep must have produced. After the truck turned, the Jeep crept closer to me, and I hadn’t known it could,
as if the driver blamed line of sight for the near collision, not stopping distance, and if anything I wanted to slow down,
but knew there was nowhere along this stretch to pass, and the Jeep fool must have know it too because he didn’t try,
so we sped along the gray tunnel, knowing there was a world out there somewhere, knowing the demarcation between
life-in-car and life-out-there was false, and out-there might impinge upon in-here at any moment. A cattle truck
is easy to see but not so the deer I caught a flash of as it danced across the frayed road, down into the ditch, away from me and the Jeep,
and no one could say what smaller creatures we passed. Beyond the thick curtain I knew there were trees already turning colors,
fallow cornfields, a couple places to stop for breakfast, diners, or almost, if they would spiff themselves up,
and I considered too late stopping in, thought scrambled eggs on a chipped plate better than having myself
scrambled and chipped if the Jeep’s driver lost himself. I didn’t know him and maybe that made it easier, to think
him stupid, rather than be angry at stupidity performed by someone who ought to know better. As we all ought
to know better: to drive careful through such gloom, lights up, but not speeding over-fast to conclusion.
Then the parking lot, a mask applied, a short walk to the key card door, and along the walkway the thin band of manicured grass,
perhaps already having had its last seasonal trim, or maybe there was one more yet to come, and the clipped grass littered
with maple leaves, red as sumac, cherry red, burning bush red, and some black-red of old blood, paper thin,
a wisp recalling the veneer fog made, the false isolation, the empty stairwell, the hair-thin difference between safe, and not.