The Absence of Wavelength

Here We Go Again

I try to smooth the steel edges and then hop back in. Mirrors adjusted, I see where you are, a pilot in hind view (backseat).

In the throes of January, it’s a mystery why she’s deceased. We looked through the obituary for clues. Someone just like us, but different in one way: dead. Really dead.

Our vehicle is getting warmer. But soon your distraction is well seen, and settled in my cockpit I go.

The mirror is clean, yet from this vista I get a dim view. For 60 long years an immaculate machine in and out of repair always attuned to you.

As my engine revs, all I notice is a lonely horizon. How many times when you exit this cabin did I consider a journey alone? Instead, I wonder aloud, should I turn here? You say, try again.
Should I drive straight, I ask. Again, try again.

All my life wondering how’s my driving, where are we going, I wonder why you don’t sit up front or take the wheel.

I start to question the need for repair, tune ups or even a garage. I forgot the true purpose of this machine I’m steering through sleet on arctic snow.

I think of the words that will be chosen and paid for print. Dying is not free. This whole life and stubborn machine are wrought with cost.

Under the hood, I rewire and rewire until I don’t know what goes to what anymore. An entire life trying to perfect something I did not create, overhauled and rebuilt…to go in direction that is meant.

But in order to not be a lonely traveler, I accepted you as navigator and reluctant co-pilot. And from the backseat, you seem to have directed me. Request you take the wheel, you deflect.

Maybe, I’ll steer this thing into the river. No. I forget the cost. The sun is directly in my eyes as I dream sundown into lonely, equatorial senectitude.


2.20.22

I plead for understanding in the midst of my own ignorance.