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Missing
They were gone, the reflective lines
painted to guide them. Leaving only
the dark tongue of newly paved road
twisting into lakeside pine. Riding back,
they laughed off chance and loss,
the casino’s neon still littering their eyes.
If it was they did not listen—
if it was they could not listen—
mattered little to the road. It rose
in the mouth of night. It spoke.
And cresting its hill, they found themselves
half-blinded by the oncoming truck,
the small bowl of land below
filled with wan gold.
And then, it was passed: the truck,
a quick wind in the window.
And then, the haunches chiseled sinews,
the great dark marble of eye,
the lethal crown of antlers
lifting into their headlights.
It will be years from this moment—
when death, again, rises into the light
of their lives, or rides down their darkened hills—
when one will turn to the other to ask,
Do you remember the unflinching indifference?
The stillness of the young buck?
They swerved, missed, and it was gone.
And the lines on the road were gone.
And the voice of the road was gone.
And the hotel bed was soft and waiting.
And they slept, never wondering
what the road might have told them. |
