NIGHT DRIVING

 

Motels, restaurants, funeral homes

trickle into the sticks. The dark

intervals lengthen.

                            Out

in the night

in the beauty of going nowhere

practicing the face of the lover returned

so the dream can begin correctly.

         Below the stars

                         dark fields slide away.

The first small town is taken in a single breath.

 

Years pass.

Faces in photographs

submerged in shadow

                   smudged with light.

establish a first

                final distance.

The chest constricts past small town squares.

Cool dark fields give no air.

On some nights fear

so strong it seems like

death.

          Movement

                           becomes essential

as breath.

 

Is it possible now to stop

and change anything moving in this

future of next moments?

At dawn from shadows

statues of black

angus press

destination like a hand falling

asleep on a chest

weighs into waking.

 

The lover never returns.

The dream never starts into sleep.

 

Bodies of small animals.

 

Insurance signs left on all night.

 

                                    Mike Rychlewski

 

***

 

 

OUR FRIENDS IN ASIA

 

Walter Ball & Patrick Talty

the class clowns of 4th grade.

Their names went together like

Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy.

 

Photographs of women with baskets on their heads.

Paragraphs on the Mystical Body Of Christ.

Produce maps with bars of iron and grains of rice.

 

An ancient folly says

the world is really inside out

and beyond the stars at night

lies Asia.

 

They both died years ago

Patrick Talty & Walter Ball

whose names went together like

Oliver Hardy & Stan Laurel.

 

At night when the stars are bright

bars of iron

                        grains of rice

                                                over Asia

our friends.

 

 

***