SALVATION

It’s not that I harbor a weeping willow

Shadow’s worth of longing for those cloaked

Turns and straight-aways, or that swampy

South Mississippi was ever half as tragic

As I dreamed it could be, but that I still cruise

From time to time in the dope-ripe

Ford Fairlane of the mind where nothing

Has changed, where we remain hopelessly

Stoned devotees of the TOWN OF LEAKESVILLE

Emblazoned upon the graffitied water tower’s

Testimonies to love. We believed speed

Would save us, would take us fast

And far away from the junkyard wrecks

Stacked in their mile-long convoy to nowhere.

And though losing the way should

Have seemed the worst of divine betrayals,

We took it as a minor fall from grace,

Tail-spun over the embankment rail, rocking

That flung steel body down as if to play

A bar-chord on the barbed-wire fence.

I’ll never know what angelic overseer

Was bored and on duty that night, but we

Rose up and climbed out of the warped last

Breath of that car, no one with so much

As a scratch on his head, not a drop

Of beer spilt, and the radiator hissing

Like a teapot in hell when someone yelled

She’s gonna blow! and each of us standing

There, starving for something more,

Something other than the black wheel

Spinning that sudden dark, cricketed quiet.