yellow lights

we drove home last night
& every stop light 
turned yellow for us

i've been having trouble
giving myself over
to poetry lately--

i hesitate to 
fall all the way in--

to drown idea--

can we just talk here now
then & maybe something
will come up?

so what if there's nothing 
profound to say about stop lights?

what if someone else has 
said it better?

i pressed my forehead to
the cool glass of the window
as the road twisted & turned
like a piece of yarn--

i joke that they should make
all roads in one straight line 
towards where every i have
to go--

directly through the mountains--

no meandering-- 

no room for antique shops to 
emerge from the soil
with their rusty OPEN signs
born from condemned heavens--

there were deer in
the woods beside us--

their eyes flickering
like silver dollars--

do they know the roads
or are they surprised every 
time a station wagon 
like yours crawls by in 
the night--

high beams cutting
shadows from trees--

i think of all 
the times i drove home
alone through thickets
of trees--

i fantasized about
the car breaking down
even though i told everyone
that i would be terribly 
anxious if it did--

i think we all like
small catastrophes--

you say you've never
hit an animal &

i think about that one
time driving home
from my aunt's house 
for thanksgiving when 
i hit a ground hog 

pulled over on the side of the
road to see if somehow
it had lived--

i didn't cry but
i backed away slowly &
drove home without talking
to anyone

i don't think
i said much last night
letting myself lilt in 
& out of your conversations

i smiled & imagined myself
as a green minnow net or
maybe the egret we saw on
the way there--

tall celery stick legs
dipped in the brook--

i watch cars go by--

pose for them & watch
the humans as they press
faces to windows & beam--

i have nothing
to do with destinations
or rubber tires--

my neck is a serpenting
path to Bethlehem--

the one made of steel

if i were to be
put in charge of making
new roads 

i would score the
earth like the squares on
my red & black flannel--

a perfect grid
a quilt--

our car would be a
single checker
moving space by space
by space--

slowly through
a yellow light--

we didn't stop once--

celestial gold glint in
the rear view mirrors--

oh maybe there it
is-- the profound thing 

i was looking for--

i tell you how 
the only thing 
i learned in statistics
class is that the randomness of
every stop light is
all it's own--

each pass 
the same chance 
of any color--