Hard Landing
Aug 17 2010


I’ve always loved
driving through rain.
An autumn shower, a sudden downpour,
wet leaves plastered down,
black asphalt, shimmering.

I am cocooned
in the glow of the dashboard light
the wipers’ gentle thwack
the heat, blasting.
In plumb seams
of glass and steel,
the glossy skin, shedding wind
slipping through frictionless.
Effortlessly closing the distance
that’s come between us.

Windshield wipers slap
like clock-work,
leaving the glass, for an instant
squeegee-clean.
Then hard rain, like pounding nails
and the world through a watery gauze
turns magic —
rippling trees, with fresh green paint
running off,
perfect drops
freeze-framed in the headlights.

Except today
water sluices over the windshield
in a thick translucent layer,
and the flailing blades are useless
in such stupendous rain.
The road turns grey
dissolving,
and my speed seems suddenly catastrophic,
brakes squishy, tires spinning.
I hydro-plane into low-level flight,
the wheel in my white-knuckle grip
a useless appendage,
disconnected from earth.

So far off, I can’t even tell if it’s stopped.
If the friction of the moving parts
has brought me down,
if the landing will be hard
or soft.

But either way, we are still apart,
the distance even bigger.
The flood, Biblical,
our desires trivial,
the weather gods, as usual
indifferent.