D.U.I.

May 27 2016

Driving under the influence

of speed

inertia

escape.

Intoxicated

by motion itself.

She sat to my right

in the old sedan, with its flat bench seat.

Slick vinyl, she could sidle across

and cozy up,

leaning her heat, her weight

hard against my side.

Those times, on the dark Interstate

when she bowed her head

and pleasured me,

hands gripping the wheel

at 2, and 10.

All those horses

at such easy command

with an effortless tap.

The throttle’s silky compliance

engine’s throaty whine.

The high-bore block,

pistons throbbing

tuned exhaust.

So no one feels small, frail

flesh and blood

enclosed in steel and glass.

The open road

a tank of gas.

And going too fast

because you can’t get there soon enough;

saddened to find

only the scenery’s changed.

For a reason I’m not so sure of myself, I find myself returning to this theme:  the fugue state, the lure of the open road, the geographic cure. I think it’s because when I feel dissatisfied, my mind turns to this illusion of escape:  which, despite its easy seduction, takes all of 5 minutes to lose its allure in real life.

Although this particular poem actually began in a completely different place. Once again, it was that  back-page personal essay that appears every weekday in the Globe and Mail. This one was about a child killed by a drunk driver. I hate drunk drivers, and feel they should all be locked up for natural life, whether the consequence of driving drunk is loss of life or not. I know this betrays an unbecoming and self-righteous sense of retribution – a model of justice that’s more about vengeance that restitution. But I said it was a feeling, not a public policy prescription. Anyway, when the expression “D.U.I.” crossed my mind, I thought there was many other ways of being distracted behind the wheel:  power, escape, sex; to name 3. This is the poem that followed.

I’m not so sure about “pleasured”. It’s the kind of euphemism I’d normally avoid. It sounds like those immoderately modest bodice-rippers, where they use every cliché and every polite indirection. On the other hand, the word is economical, it fits, and anything explicit would be out of keeping with the tone of the poem.

I also originally had the 2^nd stanza written as “you”. But, as always, 1^st person is much more powerful – autobiographical, or not!

I had my doubts about the repetition of “only”. Because repetition seems lazy. And because it can be a lost opportunity to add nuance and depth. But I like it here. I think there is an additive effect and a quality of refrain that makes the ending stronger. And anyway, any variation I tried without using “only” in each line somehow didn’t work.

And finally, my car is hardly that:  any high-pitched whine isn’t horsepower; it’s an under-powered engine straining under the load!

Meantime, here’s the essay I mentioned:

Un­speak­able Losses

The Globe and Mail Metro (Ontario Edition) - 2016-05-26

Heidi Mor­ri­son lives in Topanga, Calif.

An elderly woman sitting near my newborn son and me in an airport restaurant leaned over to tell me that a baby in her hometown died recently from influenza. “The funeral is this Saturday, on the pregnant mother’s due date,” she added.

As I clutched my baby’s little hand, deep sadness resounded through my heart. Unwittingly or not, she had tapped into a place of profound worry. I wondered why this woman would tell me a morbid baby story in light of my vulnerability as an obviously new mother.

I remembered how less than a year prior, when I was nearing my due date, another stranger spontaneously approached me to share a distressing story about motherhood. As I stood washing my hands in the gym restroom, the stranger divulged that she’d had an abortion because her partner was unsuitable for parenthood. “Do you think the fetus suffered any pain?” she asked me.

I excused her inappropriate conversation, assuming that my pregnant body must have elicited a mix of emotions in her.

I tried to muster up a similar sense of compassion for the woman in the airport restaurant, who was sitting alone, eating French fries one by one. The iPads mounted at each table make it easy for customers to place their orders then drift away, surfing the Web. Defying the isolation that this setup invited, and pushing aside my own discomfort and fear, I gestured to her that I was willing to hear more.

“I know what it feels like to lose a child,” she continued. More than 20 years ago, she’d woken up to a police officer at the door telling her that her son, John, was dead. A 17-yearold girl driving under the influence had swerved off the road and hit John, who had pulled over to help a stalled motorist. The accident occurred within sight of the home where John’s mother was sleeping. He had moved back to his parents’ house from college a week earlier, ready to begin his first job. His older brother’s wedding, a few weeks away, would have an empty seat.

As I sat listening to this tragic story, unable to eat the noodles in front of me, I looked at my son, asleep so soundly and innocently. “Wait, what did you say was your son’s name?” were, embarrassingly, the first words I uttered at the close of the woman’s story.

“John. His name was John.” “That’s my son’s name,” I replied.

“Well, give him an extra hug each day and tell him you love him.”

That would have been a simple point for me to end the increasingly difficult conversation, but out of both curiosity and obligation I did not conveniently divert my eyes to the iPad in front of me.

“I decided not to press charges against the 17-year-old-girl,” the woman said, as if anticipating my next question. My jaw dropped. “I told the girl that all I wanted from her was that she grows up to live a good life and do good to others.”

“And that gave you the peace you needed to move on in your life?” I probed.

She didn’t answer my question directly. “In the weeks following John’s death, neighbours, friends and family would not let me spend a moment alone. They would be in my kitchen in the morning making coffee before I even awoke. They brought me meals. They did my shopping. I was very near to drifting away.”

The conversation continued for another quarter of an hour, but in my memory, that is where the story ends.

I don’t know the woman’s name, nor do I think I could recognize her in a crowd. In one sense, our exchange was a way to pass time while awaiting our flights, but in another, it was much more. Remarkably, she had found the peace to move on in her life despite having experienced one of the greatest injustices that can be inflicted on a parent. Even more remarkably, she had found this peace without reprisal.

She told me that years after she lost her son she received a letter from the woman who killed him. The woman had established a family and, surprisingly, lost a sibling to a similar type of motor accident – and forgiven the driver as she had been forgiven.

The two distressing conversations I had at the gym and the airport pushed me to marshal up a form of forgiveness. It was painful to hear about termination of a pregnancy while nearing the due date of my long-anticipated son, and to hear about the death of two children while I cradled my newborn. I had endured years of failed pregnancy attempts, including miscarriage. My pregnancy was high-risk and followed closely by specialists, leaving me in a mixed state of grief and excitement.

Nonetheless, I didn’t respond to the women’s insensitivity with spite or vengeance. I wanted them to maintain their dignity. This response was a form of support for the freedom they had found to move forward in their lives.

I can only hope the willingness to forgive would come into my heart and mind if I – perish the thought – woke up to a policeman at my door.