Night Vision

Shadowed trees hunch
past my windows,
their dark forms eclipsing
the night's activities
between the trunks and branches.

And I speed
as if the faster spin of tires
lessens my inactivity.
I sit with little more than my eyes
registering life.

The white lines sneak into the field
of my headlights
and disappear beneath me, hardly
marked on my retinas.
Blurred pavement is all I know.

Into my failing
night vision rides a line
of red tail lights
that stream on like patches
of blood

coursing through a vein.
And each pair
of red lights marks another
driver's passage,
one more pair of eyes that glide

along the yellow
center line, that avoid the line
of watching trees.
I slide into this red stream,
one more car
adding to the lightsÕ activity.

A. Popp
1995

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