A Lone Lover's Nightdrive

[To listen to Mark Goodwin reading this poem, click here]

A lonely lovely O of a
wheel between his hands is sensitised
to a surface & curves of a way

ahead. A double O of his eyes overlaps
2 flat films to produce
a stereo-vision of a direction he goes

in. 4 black rubber rings that sing
slick revolution make
contact with hares' brea(d)ths; locations

slim as a flashed badger-spectre; pop
-ulations of hopes & worries squashed
to a thin instant a fox-brush is tugged

into a background's black lattice. Micro
-seconds of places flick
past their glints of cats, sticks, lit wind Os,

lampposts, night-bycyclists; props
of a million crammed
in dramas of lifes slip across a cow

-catcher of windscreen; a shield
that deflects accelerated
air but allows light's solid property, its sub

-stantial collateral, to penetrate
this car-interior's
warm yolk. The road ahead is now

naked. After a village a national speed

          limit's zero declares
          its diagonal - he puts
          his foot down.
          And her smile
          is what he drives
          along: a long
          way of her
          voice; a journey
          of her kiss
          & its slick
          bends. Trees

on a verge, solid & rooted, are promises a road
passes-by; letters in a love
letter his double-eye brush against as they flow along

rivers between & below a texture of a road's surf.

 [First published by Masthead]

Copyright © Mark Goodwin, 2012