The Chauffeur Poem by David Nelson Bradsher

A man delivers one inspiring speech
after another, and the nation's keys
are fished from pockets, tossed and, near his reach,
they hang and jangle in the shifting breeze.

Election Day: a driver takes the wheel.
One passenger becomes the State Chauffeur.
Peeling away from curves, the tires squeal,
and he accelerates. The engine’s purr

goes to a jackal's chatter, harsh, intense.
The car careens off course and plows afield,
then crashes through an old, forbidding fence
that was, by time (and purpose) , long concealed.

This way is new: a thicket, overgrown,
a mass admittance to the wild unknown.