Ninety-Five

A new poem:

Ninety Five into the harsh spawning sun
glaring on westernmost Rhode Island
Ninety Five down the dagger bright strips of asphalt
crossing through the strange no-man’s land
of almost ordered forests
- The four miles where nature seems to hold her breath
and huge dawn arcs above
Ninety Five quivering on the speedometer as I’m banging
sleep-numbed fingers against the steering wheel,
grimacing my way through a song
Ninety Five struggling just to keep eyes slit and clear
Ninety Five ripping across a road that’s never meant
anything to anyone –

Rampaging north into the east,
screaming something that
ends in an undignified yelp
as gold flashes out from the hacked and unkempt treeline –

I lock yammering eyes with some confused deer as
hundreds of pounds of metal and flesh,
encased in bubbling air rushes in with the wind and
every ray of light to flip on a second

Flying through as I’m staring
lost in huge empty circles
and I know
That in hundreds of different branches of this moment,
Off through other worlds than this,
I am dying.


But,
in this one the deer blinks dual bands of light
and I fly past,
Ninety-five down Ninety Five,
shuddering.