A Question of Faith
When a drunk turns his key
and the engine doesn’t turn over,
I wonder if souls traveling back
always land in a body. Or are they
pulled like asteroids to the Earth?
Are they round? Would they skip
across the ponds to the old willow,
that drinks a fat baron’s share of
the water, and shivers
with the secrets of the fallen.
Would they compress flat onto the
arteries of highways, varicose
across Nevada deserts, stick
like road kill to the tires of passing
trucks? Again doomed to the
same endless circles.
Do they land in the vast fields of tobacco
and hops? Do we take them in;
write off those imaginative leaps to the buzz?
Are those drunken revelries our memories,
or have we taken something in,
imagining it was our own all along?
Do they light the fires of lust under our bellies
or fuel the sense of injustice from a life
tragically snuffed, a rock that flares,
hurls itself toward the blue waters
and breaks against the atmosphere.
Like the electric sweat of the sparkplug,
as a drunk drifts harmlessly into sleep.