Sick to death of the hardpan shoulder,

the froth of noise

the undersides of the cedars make,

the windblown dark that hints

and fails for hours at effacement—

maybe I could claim it isn’t

praying, but it’s asking,

at the least, begging

that these lungfuls of this blackness

eat whatever keeps on swelling

and collapsing in my chest, and be done

with it, no more noise

left hanging in the spaces

between brake lights than a smothered rush

that sounds like suffering

and is nothing. Instead a sobbing isn’t

so much easing from my throat

as shining like black light from my torso,

veining the leaves of weeds, stoning

the whole roadside in a halo—I can feel

the heat of truck lights on my back,

I’m inside that brilliant gravity,

I think of time, I’m in the driver’s

nightmare and it shudders by—