daylight shooting star
long clouds laid out
like panting dogs
upon the sky.
baking pavement,
swimming in the heat,
ready to burn paws.
sparse trees,
young and small and weak
and unrelentingly green.
I’m tailing the next car,
up to the next hill,
up to the rise,
up a speed table.
it’s a lonely kind of upwards
(they only let dead dogs into space)—
fast and wyrd and
utterly expected.
I imagine I can pull the car’s steering wheel
up, like a plane’s.
I’d fly into the gravitational blue
(like so many before me),
and leave a fluffy white tail:
daylight shooting star.
4 thoughts on "daylight shooting star"
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hi! I like leaving author’s notes, so here’s the first one of this year!
I’ve just started driving in earnest (I had to put it off, due to a string of family issues and bureaucratic concerns), and I spend a decent amount of time going down suburban and residential roads. They always make me feel very lonely and sad, like I’ve wasted every bit of potential that has led me to this point (“this point” being driving down a road, I suppose). Same feeling I get when I’m up too late at night. This feeling has been the subject of several poems of mine, to varying effect. Maybe one day I’ll write one that perfectly encaptures the experience, then I’ll die from the shock of it. Who knows.
Thanks for reading!
Love this meandering wonderful meditation on driving and being driven, Ryan. “it’s a lonely kind of upwards” may be my new favorite line
This is a lovely poem, Ryan. The imagery is beautiful, I love the cloud dogs, daylight shooting star.
I have a feeling the anthology title is going to come from this poem, there’s just too many good lines