Night Drive

Lie on my lips; words on my mind
The evening processional hymn begins.
And the rains on the car's windowpanes
Do their vibration dance;
Gyrate to the internal ticking.

We're dropping through numbered exits.
The music tickles the background air,
We drop further, 28, 27, 26.

Car wings around a hill and there will be nothing to stop us this time!.
Light, dusting over dark horizon forms.
Rivers like starlight,
A million sodium arc reflections.
Roads wind up, around and through surrounding hills.

All this way for words, songs and our self amusement.
"Manual labor's not for me.'
'Let's start a poet colony in Vermont.'
'A bed and breakfast where you pay with performance.'
"Oh yeah, give me more, Sir Thomas Moore."

The lie becomes flesh and dwells among us,
When we see the woman play guitar.
We think her name is Angelina.
She plays just for us.
Her music fans the flame of our own lyric fires.

Cafe Arabica is our after-theater haunt.
A ghost of a haunt, our first time.
A double espresso for me.
I finger my beard wandering through conversations and newspapers.
Convincing myself that there are no Altman films in West PA.

Hop in the car, hellhole-bound, I concentrate on the white lines, and a love.
Word becomes flesh and she dwells among us.
"Oh, didn't you know?" Shotgun says, "Wedding band."
He sees the median draw near. "Sorry, I'm imagining what sympathy would feel like."
When my right hand is flipping left turns he begins, "Vermont's just a few states away."