Notes on the Night Highway II — Born Magazine 2005

Notes on the Night Highway (II)
by Wayne Miller

The sky can’t hold the electricity forever—

it keeps spilling out. By morning, empty
bottles hold a wolf pack in an o-mouthed howl,

though the beer is gone. In Oklahoma,
the radio tower lost beneath its flashing

light was a dark web I knew to be there,
(though the lit house on the black hill

never quite landed in its thought—).
Trucks asleep by the highway wonderfully

depict the drivers sealed inside them—
when we drifted by I put this into words

as passing headlights filled your hair.
I try to believe we live in love’s body—

so when it forgets us, we’re still organs
pulsing for its life. My father claims

the past is in us, while my mother
claims it holds us. In the right hands,

a row of shrubs can turn into animals
and then the wind can stroke their fur.

A sculptor’s chisel pierces stone exactly
to its sculpture—. I must remember

that by holding you, I prepare to let you go—
even when lightning lifts the fields

sharply into view, I must remember
how we slide through them—

bornmagazine.org 2005