A Very Short Trip to a Very Dark Place
……………………I
Past midnight they drive
…………down a back road,
unpaved, unlit,
…………towards nowhere they know.
Where the highbeams push
…………the woods divide,
then shoulder in close
…………around and behind.
They’ve left their city
…………cloaked in a blaze
that cottons its sky
…………like breath on a pane,
for this least-peopled place
…………in a thousand miles,
their blind on a starfield
…………no wastelight will hide.
He parks in a clearing,
…………she pockets her phone,
the engine stops humming,
…………the dashboard dims down,
and night in that instant
…………ambushes them
with the truth of what passes
…………for darkness back home.
……………………II
Where the simmering wake
…………of the Milky Way floats,
a gold like San Marco’s
…………in a blue like Van Gogh’s
limns without lightening
…………the opaque uncolor
that joins their silhouettes;
…………then a noise, and it’s over.
That was close. . . Something’s coming. . .
…………They know that we’re here!
“Spectacular.” “It is.”
…………“So we’ll go then?” “Sure.”
He slews the car round,
…………she maps a way back,
the tires spew gravel,
…………thank god they’d got gas.
All down the highway
…………it’s aftermath and laughter,
regret-slash-relief
…………they didn’t stay longer,
but no words just yet
…………for what they imagined
stalking through a light
…………that illumines nothing.
© James McKee
James McKee enjoys failing in his dogged attempts to keep pace with the unrelenting cultural onslaught of late-imperial Gotham. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Acumen, New Ohio Review, The Raintown Review, Flyway, Saranac Review, The Comstock Review, THINK, The Midwest Quarterly, Xavier Review, and elsewhere. He spends his free time, when not writing or reading, traveling less than he would like and brooding more than he can help.
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