Lane Change

Late night in a Central Valley

California city, where farm air

sniffs neon. Blacktop, moist after

rain, gleams. Phosphorescent lamps

and traffic signals hang in cheery

gloom. Everybody's left the party.

I drift the silver-green Chevy

over to a lane for 

       LEFT OR U TURN ONLY and

stop.

A Ford rolls up in another lane,

obeys a red light, engine grumbling

in that Ford way. (This happened

long ago, when people befriended cars

and trucks.) I see the mouth

of the driver, a young woman, singing

the song my radio's singing. (We used

car radios then.) She turns her head

and, singing, smiles through two windows,

turns back and sees

        GREEN

and off with an automatic-transmission

(such things mattered then)

start goes her gunned Mustang

(me in my Camaro), wheels spitting

water and grit--gone. Just gone. Now

I sing the song. It liked her 

better. I murder it. The

         RED

light winks into a green arrow.

How lovely, an Imagist poem. 

Awake, the Camaro lurches,

goes through engine-crescendos

as I manage gas pedal brake pedal

clutch pedal stick-shift steering & a certain

sad projection of Camaro cool . . .

. . . to follow the Ford would have

been just plain wrong. "On a number

of levels," as the academics (I was 

trying to become one) used to say

in that former farm-town that grows

research. Learning her name, hearing

her voice in talk and song, inducing

her laughter--yes, a belly laugh--. . .

not wrong. Not possible. I turn

not around but sufficiently LEFT

as never to see the Ford the woman

again, at least according to my poet's

sense of statistical probability (everyone

but me carried a thick calculator then).

Sad and lonely, I stride from car

to bad buggy bungalow door and say

No not sad and lonely but alive and

the washed air smells fine and I might

have a glass of red wine.

hans ostrom circa 1975/2021