I never knew the night sky could be like that,
the way you described it to her, moaning
into the phone’s receiver—even though she’d been
right there with you—and I pictured it
as I listened behind the door:
Ocean-big, spread
quilt-like over the third fairway as lovers huddled
under a shower of stars. I was the good son,
home before dark, a life of pencil to paper
not skin on skin, never knowing first-hand
The stars’ cold burn.
You, though, your life crackled
with confident mayhem, couldn’t go fast enough
in your Dodge Colt, skipping class with your
high-school blond, thrilling me
with fear, our father ranting red-faced,
our mother on her knees
whispering please, please.
Even after you pulled
yourself together, got a moving truck, an apartment,
gathered furniture from curbsides, carved
your long, slow path to a PhD and we all ballooned
with pride, I never learned to quit my panic
when I wake in the dark to a gunned engine,
squealing rubber, headlights that splash their beams
for an instant across my bedroom wall.
In the blackness
of space, asteroids collide and fracture, a white-hot fragment
arcing into a canyon. I think of you
on your motorcycle in California
atop a mountain pass on a fresh and foggy
winter morning. When a phone jangles,
I brace for impact.
Robert Darken earned a B.A. from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in Education from the University of Michigan. Originally from the Midwest, he now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches English at New Canaan High School.
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