Steering Wheel by Jorie Graham

Steering Wheel

 

In the rear-view mirror I saw the veil of leaves

suctioned up by a change in current

and how they stayed up, for the allotted time,

in absolute fidelity to the force behind,

magenta, hovering, a thing that happens,

slowly upswirling above the driveway

I was preparing to back clear out of—

and three young pine trees at the end of that view

as if aghast with bristling stillness—

and the soft red updraft without hesitation

aswirl in the prickly enclosing midst—

and on the ratio I bent to press on,

a section with rising strings plugging in,

crisp with distinctions, of the earlier order.

Oh but I haven’t gotten it right.

You couldn’t say that it was matter.

I couldn’t say that it was sadness.

Then a hat from someone down the block

blown off, rolling—tossing—across the empty macadam,

an open mouth, with no face round it,

O and O and O and O—

“we have to regain the moral pleasure

of experiencing the distance between subject and object,”

—me now slowly backing up

the dusty driveway into the law

composed of updraft, downdraft, weight of these dried

                                                                    midwinter leaves,

light figured-in too, I’m sure, the weight of light,

and angle of vision, dust, gravity, solitude,

and the part of the law which is the world’s waiting,

and the part of the law which is my waiting,

and then the part which is my impatience—now; now?—

 

though there are, there really are,

things in the world, you must believe me.