Kate Daniels: Driving
That was the year that summer lingered
and fall came on late. I was still wearing
sleeveless clothes when the temperatures fell,
and the wind rose suddenly, and tore the leaves
from their branches in a matter of days.
By then, there was a long line of addicts
on the corner every morning – red-nosed
and shivering, sores all over, reminding me
of the roaming packs of starving dogs you see
in third world countries. I shooed them away
when they begged for money… All that autumn,
I was searching for my son. Why I never looked
among the junkies on the corner who, after all,
were other people’s sons, or why – god help me –
I drove right through their tattered clots,
and kept my coins to myself, and controlled
my thoughts – I have no clue. I just kept driving
though I had no sense of where I was going,
or what I’d do, or what I might find if I got there.
Copyright 2018 Kate Daniels. From In the Months of My Son’s Recovery by Kate Daniels. Forthcoming from LSU Press (2019).
Reprinted from Five Points vol. 18, #2 2017. Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.
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