4:00 am

I'm on my way to Minnesota. I look down.
It's 4:00 am, and I'm just barely past Des Moines.
I can't stand the radio. I'd rather hear the motor's
Drone, the whining of my bargain tires. Anyway,
I'm thinking of the one I'm going to see. He's dead,
A good friend once, long out of touch. I think of when
We used to swim, the times we went into
The mountains, girlfriends and wives and children,
Wordplay as we crossed such empty spaces
As the one I'm in. Northern Iowa at night in winter
Doesn't scare me. It's astringent, drawing things
From me: these memories of my old friend,
Stray thoughts of days with J in Paris, what was
Once but is no longer, what was sought but
Couldn't be. He's dead for real now, not just
In my mind, and I'm not all that hale. Those
Days we swam and hiked go back to Nixon,
Fifty years ago, and, over all the decades since,
I've driven ever deeper into night and cold and
Iowa, an endless empty space.



Poetry by Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 71 times
Written on 2018-02-26 at 13:11

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