Fleeting Images from the Highway

A double sonnet dedicated to my valentine @joaofred, inspired by roads past and roads yet to be driven. It was really challenging to work the (imperfect) iambic pentameter, but I think I managed.

Fleeting Images from the Highway

I saw the now become the past. Look right,
look left, and you can see it too: dry land
sprinkled with rocks, an eagle taking flight,
dead snake dangling from its beak. Unmanned

gas stations, “closed” signs everywhere, adorn
the landscape. They’re a blur my brain tries to
compute, but memory, the treacherous whore,
is fleeting. Little lasts from it all. I knew,

when I left home, that I’d be left with few:
snapshots in instagram, a short blog post
I wrote in Tennessee, American Gods still
forgotten in the back seat, full of notes

— our plans and declarations of undying
love — I miss you, but I keep on driving.

*

I saw our plans become the present: Now!
Look left and you’ll see the house on the rock.
Just twelve miles ago we got in that stupid bout,
you want’d to see Niagara Falls, New York

but I wouldn’t let you. It isn’t in the book.
Landscapes of steel and woods became abstract
blurs, passing us by: running deer, dried brooks
and Neil’s soothin’ voice. I felt like Lisa Nowak,

mad, running after the ghost of a lover (minus
the adult diapers), but you were right there
mumbling about the prophecies of Nostradamus
on the death seat while we listen’d to Neverwhere.

I will hold tight to the good bits, the me-
mory of our road trip, when love began.