Driving in Sleet
Driving twenty miles to Keene
in sleet as gray as a slice
of brain, I feel small enough
for powerful men to pocket
like change. The highway shudders
as it slews across a landscape
alienated by self-interest.
Timid houses cling to the swells.
A frozen reservoir looks resigned.
Last night a friend phoned and left
a message. “Thanks for the friendship,”
his drunken voice argued. No way
to return such a call. No way
to forgive myself for befriending
anyone. The facts repel me:
slick highway, surly old hills,
a voice on the radio coughing up
a congeries of headlines. Thoreau
warned that no individual
could solve the news from Mexico
or France, the fact of telegraphy
a joke too universal to earn
a laugh. I drive as carefully
as a child. The miles tend downhill,
village after village, the ruts
I score in the fresh sleet crust
look significant, and the cry
stifled in the dark of my skull
tastes like the self-digestion
I’ve always feared to indulge.
- William Doreski