The loneliness of the Car is on-going,
not like reading a newspaper
where things seem to end.

I sit inside the Car
behind the wheel. Its
life can be felt here in
this seat.
But with limitations.
If I talk to you
something different  happens,
subtle or not.
But here in this space
looking out on the road
it feels like my eye. My
eye does this one thing.
Continually.
Only this one thing.
Focusing.
Meanwhile I do the
looking. The Car is
like this. It carries,
I travel.

In it's loneliness the Car
craves my voice. It wants
to be soothed. But I look
over it or through it. I absent
myself from its heart. It sits
in the rain, the snow, the
hot sun, and waits for me.
It is not going anywhere
until I engage it.
What does all this mean?
I wonder as I stare at the
Red dash lights.
How can I bring this form
into my arms?
If I close my eyes the
Inside of the Car seems
a dark blue in the evening
light. When I open them
it has no color. Just darkness.
It is peaceful, like bread,
here in the Car. I fill
the Car while the Car
takes me in. It seems
I am everywhere in the Car,
in a way that is necessary.
The Car is obligated to let
me have these thoughts:
that I am driving, that
I am going somewhere,
and there is no Car.

Kay Ryan is the new poet laureate, reluctantly so. I love her poetry.  The way she works with  words in short spare sentences leaves me pondering .

Carrying a Ladder

We are always
really carrying
a ladder, but it's
invisible. We
only know
something's
the matter:
something precious
crashes; easy doors
prove impassable.
Or, in the body
there's too much
swing or off-
center gravity.
And, in the mind,
a drunken capacity,
access to out-of-range
apples.  As though
one had a way to climb
out of the damage
and apology.

 -Kay Ryan

A little light was left,
enough for the ghost deer.
We stood by the fallow
corn field, she and I,
listening until they appeared,
blinking, two, four, then seven
or eight, then fewer, finally just
the color of evening, muted, stretched.

Now it's late afternoon, two hidden birds
screech across the head high corn.
I stand where we stood.
The finches drag yellow over the
soft open thistles at the back of the field.
I mosey through an alley of green thinking
of Cary Grant in North by Northwest. In the
thistles, I kneel, listening to the woodpeckers.
The ghost deer are still here.
Maybe we were asleep that cool night
Maybe we dreamed of the ghost deer.
But I remember them now as
I experienced them then.
As a memory, that quiet,  moving out into
our presence-- As if I recognized them then
the way I still see them now.

You have not convinced me
of anything. A world this thick
is always already making a point.
God is arguing with me, sending
out an endless cascade of bullet
points, just beyond my breath.
Back here I have my reasons.
But they don't stack up. They
are just music.  Even if I mail
them and wait for a reply there
is still time for the tide, either way.
All persuasion is gifting, I think.
When the world persuades me through
a bumblebee on lavender, or when
the awnings of dark hostas say "look,"
I have to agree. When the light hits
your eyes in the middle of a smile
I say yes...

We are not alive yet. We skitter along the top of a bridge arch
and peer over the cornice. It is a distance we cannot judge.
There is no reference point. But eventually a native sense rises,
telling us to go, to let go, to do. The one who sustains us is nearby.
The thing about falling is that eventually there is a constant- terminal
velocity.  All things become redundant until we slow or accelerate.
The wing is just attention. The beak is only focus. And the eye has
such clarity that it sees the future coming. The raw data always indicates
somewhere something is not possible. This will pass for hope. This will
save itself. This will restore the colors as the spell is broken. This will
disguise itself as a solution in a world where the answers evade. At that
moment of terminal velocity we can still find a way to tuck a little tighter,
breaking the given.