The windshield wipers whisk
back and forth, back and forth
back and forth and forward on
as I drive east on I-4
from Saint Petersburg to Orlando.
Through the sideways rain and monsoon winds
I see green signs for Winter Haven and Lakeland,
the later one being where Aaron Marsh lives
who I just saw play with his band Copeland
at the Ritz Ybor Theater, for the first time in five years.
Maybe someday if I’m ever a teacher I’ll go
on a hiatus of my own and call it a sabbatical,
but until then I gaze past the palm trees and power lines at
the lights still on inside an all-night diner where I imagine Aaron
might have first met his wife, Niki, for coffee and some conversation.
How does one craft the sweetest melancholies?
For there are an infinite number of intricate ways
to say you feel a dull bite of stinging sadness
and sometimes it
can be a falsetto feeling
to know that you’re alive
and tonight I feel reluctant that I
did not fight the mirror-room crowd
to ask Aaron what it means when he sings:
in her arms you will never starve
and just how do
the oceans of her kindness,
pull you under?
The woodwind synths cajole me into a catharsis
imagining my own Ixora with red flowers in her hair.
To teleport her here is my one night-dream desire
maybe she might caresses my left cheek. Maybe my
cologne would wear off on her soft, crimson blouse.
The robotic voice of a GPS interrupts my fantasy
telling me to take exit 62 and merge right onto
Celebration Boulevard. I can still hear the wipers
whisking back and forth as my exhausted body
crawls beneath motel sheets—to fall asleep there.
The oceans of her kindness,
they will pull you under,
they will pull you under.
