Drive

A Ghazal For My Son, on the 20th anniversary of the death of his mother and brother.

I can’t grip the wheel of any car without the neuropathic burn of each long drive—
that rusted Corolla swallowing 500,000 miles of road. My hip screaming. “The Long Drive”

Home” could be the title of our book if ever we wrote one. Sometimes I think
we should. Which is to say I miss having you in my rearview. It takes a strong drive

to keep going. Sometimes I need a push. We had to move forward. No choice. From
ocean cold as winter steel to fields of waving corn. Death to life, where do I belong? Drive

fast. And everything becomes a green-gray blur. Once on 81 carving north through summer
we passed a car aflame. It exploded. Kiln hot, my skin felt thin as glaze for hours, wrong. Drive

away from any accident, no matter the miles, a flash remains behind the corneas. I remember
how dark yours were. Pupils like atoms. And the doors coated in soot. I think “The Long Drive

Home” could be an album title, if we ever wrote one. Remember the singing? Beatles,
Elvis, Stones, our voices stitched together to unravel in a shout. Unhinging the song. Drive

with anyone, looping around cities, rising and falling through mountains and you
will cling to one another, each hoping the other has the parachute. (There is none). Drive

anyway, anywhere. Wind in your hair because the AC fried a hundred thousand miles ago.
Sometimes I think I passed my death on a desert road, waved and kept on going. Son, drive

away from your ghosts, not toward them. No matter how far you have to go. A grave is not
a home. This ghost knows what it means to be haunted and to burn. Keep going. Drive

fast. Snuff the flame and leave the smoke behind you. I know what it’s like to feel
as if you will explode. Am I the explosion? The wreckage? If so, let me go. It’s a long drive,

home. And time is short. If love must be a tether, lash your ribcage to a rocket, not a stone. All
I asked was you outlive me. I didn’t mean survive. Live. Or what was it for, that long drive?

Where were we going? There is no gap you need to cross or fill. You are no one’s
resurrection. Drive them wild, crazy with refusal, with silence, with your song. Drive

on anyway, anywhere. Once, east of Toledo, you fell asleep in your booster. The lights that slid
across your face threw me to another time, another wife and son. I wept and kept going. Drive

like that too long and you will find yourself alone or wrecked. Sing/scream your name alive
at the top of your lungs. Eyes wide open, swallowing the sun. Aflame in the joy of this long drive.