The last thing I want when driving is the rain driving, too.
The phrase is perfect. The rain drives around & over us,
driving the point home that we may never get there,
its constant percussion a wordless refrain that the tires
keep trying to shush, that relentless glare on the windshield,
the unexpected splash on the left from a car out of nowhere
already out of sight again, hydroplane on the right
in invisible water pooled by the shoulder—that slip
like the lurch of a belt catching that’s hard to describe
when you know immediately but still too late that you’ve lost
purchase & control, left the ground for an instant,
hovered defied gravity but succumbed again
like getting your breath knocked out of you for the first time
& how I remember when he was little, my son said rain sounds
made him feel cozy during road trips—I think of him dozing behind
me & feeling safe while the strain of seeing ahead made me afraid
to blink & how I’d get inexplicably attached to the taillights
of a semi as if the glow could like magic tow us forward,
magical thinking, the rain driving me mad for a minute,
crazed to get him safely where we were going
where he is going & how I can’t ever get him there
beyond all the hazards
because the rain is always driving
somewhere.
The phrase is perfect. The rain drives around & over us,
driving the point home that we may never get there,
its constant percussion a wordless refrain that the tires
keep trying to shush, that relentless glare on the windshield,
the unexpected splash on the left from a car out of nowhere
already out of sight again, hydroplane on the right
in invisible water pooled by the shoulder—that slip
like the lurch of a belt catching that’s hard to describe
when you know immediately but still too late that you’ve lost
purchase & control, left the ground for an instant,
hovered defied gravity but succumbed again
like getting your breath knocked out of you for the first time
& how I remember when he was little, my son said rain sounds
made him feel cozy during road trips—I think of him dozing behind
me & feeling safe while the strain of seeing ahead made me afraid
to blink & how I’d get inexplicably attached to the taillights
of a semi as if the glow could like magic tow us forward,
magical thinking, the rain driving me mad for a minute,
crazed to get him safely where we were going
where he is going & how I can’t ever get him there
beyond all the hazards
because the rain is always driving
somewhere.
Elinor Ann Walker holds a Ph.D. in English from UNC-Chapel Hill and teaches online for University of Maryland Global Campus. She considers herself a recovering academic and has published under more than one name. She lives in Tennessee with three dogs and writes mostly on her screened porch, weather permitting. Twitter: @elinorann_poet, Website: elinorannwalker.com.