In Your Hands Poem by Craig Erick Chaffin

In Your Hands

The desert two-lane flashes
its white segments so quickly
you forget the asphalt discontinuities
and think the dashes connected
toward some future rendezvous
where night and morning join
in a secret sunrise of stars
that explains all the causalities
that propelled you here–
but your eyes are sucked back
to this moment, furious and finite
as a fly seizuring against a screen.

The yellow smears on your windshield
are souls you’ve hurt without knowing.
The whistle through the window
is your suspicion of yourself.
The radio plays country
because you really are that simple.

When it’s time to pull over
you are no closer to but no farther
from your goal. In a waking sleep
you imagine topiaries of exhaust
in the shapes of visionaries:
Jesus, Blake, Jules Verne.
Were they as rooted to the moment?
Or did they veer off into the underbrush?
The wheel is in your hands.


(published in Eclectica)