Commute

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