Imagine you are driving

At importune times amidst the madness that is curriculum planning , you have the great luck of being oh so quietly stunned by one of the poems that falls into your lap. That one piece that says the most, that represents what you were trying to capture all your life, the destination that you are also hurtling towards with that metaphorical dead dog in your boot.

Imagine you are driving

nowhere with no one beside you;

with the empty road unravelling and ravelling

in sympathy as the road turns in your hands.

On either side the wheatfields go shimmering

past in an absence of birdsong, and the sky

decants the shadows of the weather from itself.

So you drive on, hopeful of a time

when the ocean will rise before you like dusk

and you will make landfall at last –

some ancient, long-forgotten mooring

which both of you, of course, will recognise;

though as I said before, there is no one beside you

and neither of you has anywhere to go.

- John Glenday

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