Driving Home
We drive away from Milwaukee's blend of past and current,
Two afternoons after arriving from Chicago,
Slip into a silver-speckled veil of cold, wet, dense fog.
Leaving the lake — an invisible eye — behind,
We believe we'll find ourselves in a Wisconsin countryside
That the fog can't possibly reach.
Only, for the next hour and a half, all the way to Illinois,
It keeps us from seeing a hundred feet beyond our headbeams.
Soon, the sky welters itself into a commotion of dire clouds.
We speed past soggy, recently seeded corn and soybean fields
Of vast, reawakening, farm-divided heartlands,
Realizing we can't outrace the horizon-wide thunderstorm.
Soon enough, we're inundated with rain, thicker than fog,
Pummelling us with dangerous cascades.
The next hour is a tribulation that vision couldn't have envisioned.
We comfort each other, with touch —
Both of your hands gently stroking my free forearm;
My right hand rubbing your slender fingers, thumbing your wrists.
Gradually, in the west, bright, golden-white shafts of sunlight
Race across the frayed tops of a black cloud tower.
The rest of the way home, we hold the sky in our hands.
05/26/11 - (3)
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