There is something mystical
about driving alone
through the night,
the journey, a series of lights approaching,
then passing, the tail
light ahead
a lifeline
threading through the darkness,
through the whisper of tires on macadam,
the gossip of the air punctuated
by guardrails and fence posts,
where concrete barriers
funnel you,
the lights, the sound,
down a narrow flue
then release you
into the expanding night.
In the blackness horizons disappear;
silhouettes of sentinel trees
cut from star-glazed skies are felt, not seen.
Only the odometer spinning
its endless numbers
verifies your passage.
Sometimes,
in this void
where radio waves
don’t break
and billboards are mute,
where all there is
is darkness and the center line,
sometimes, God draws near.
