Laurie Sheck, “Headlights”

     Night, and I watched from the side
of the river the cars inching forward, a line of white
     headlights like the white-tipped canes
          the blind put out before each step, tapping down
onto the otherness, the world. The insides
          of the cars were dark, the windows dark.
I couldn’t see how flesh is taken up
     into the distances, enthralled by them, by the ahead;
          only the lights lifting the silver of the cables,

     the bridge’s skeletal wires,
then putting them back down. How the cars bunched
     at the tollbooths, one clotted edgy slowness,
          while in the car at the front of each line,
a hand (I couldn’t see it but of course it would be there)
          rolled down the small window,
and reached out with its ticket and its bills;
     the other hand opening
          to receive them,

     sorting out the coins for change –
the bright silver faces enshrined in each small sphere.
     Quarters. Nickels. Dimes.
          Then the hand rolling the window back up,
the faces floating behind it as if not attached,
          as music from the tollbooth pulses over
the tolltaker’s fingers drumming on the register,
     and then the barrier’s lifting,
          letting them pass through….

     Now they must be moving past the landfill,
past the gulls (are they asleep? where are their nests?)
     that poke down into the stinking
          garbage heaps by day,
and the flames from the refineries
          burning at all hours
like the flame on the assassinated President’s grave.
     Maybe a radio is on, yes, it must be on,
          a talk show,

     a voice saying Bomb them
to teach them a lesson,
     and then the click as he hangs up, the hollowness
          of air for just one second, a commercial for Pepsi,
a commercial for beef.
          Rain, guard rails, rest stops, rain, more rain,
while headlights burn through the rearview mirror
     as if pinned there, but by what?
          A hand reaches for the dial

     to keep the sound from fading,
the announcer’s words breaking up in the staticky thickness
     until another voice comes on
          and then it too strays off in jagged pieces,
slurred pauses, mangled sounds….
          The dashboard glows in the darkness,
the green numbers of each gauge each clock face
     glowing. The night is filled with them,
          these dashboards,

     and the eyes that turn toward the white-lined roadways
that yield so little,
     not shapes but the memory of shapes,
          as if the gods had taken back the world
and the terrible innocence of flesh
          glides forward in the sealed and heated cars,
the music playing, marking time,
     over the notion of home,
          over the riven vanished earth.

Laurie Sheck, b. 1953 – “Headlights” from The Willow Grove