Bookmark for the Future

I thought this now between you and I

could be wrought, so that years off,

when sitting in our living room, reading

books we haven’t ever gotten round to,

something we do now, but then we’ll be

older, surely none the wiser, reading

finally for the shear I-am-not-aloneness

or the hey-Hon-did-you-knowness of it,

so we can find this poem—this one—

wedged as a bookmark, deigned to assure

the endless novelty of us unto death,

a rough-hewn reminder, a twenty year

egg timer of this day, with its uncertain

finish (probably with you cooking pasta

and me making the salad or vice-versa)

walloping us subtly with holy nowness—

it’s the end that gives it the weight,

for me and you, now and then, always

afraid a bit, but now in written memory,

never forgotten, and thus it is so.

While Driving on Indiana 26 in March

With little better to do, I worked my eyes

slowly across the long brown fields.

Dormant for months, until this week,

when a green subtext began beneath

the smallish yards in front of doublewides

and grain silos. The road was straight headlights

for miles. I drove sixty and Carol

was sleeping just a bit between radio stations

somewhere south of Marion.

It was nearing dark, a train of sugar slurries

kept pace a mile off. A shelf of ice

still held to a pond. The train tracks turned

to meet the road and it went under us

in a muffled rush. On the bent corner

of the bridge a painted cross tied with flowers

marked where some woman had died.

I drove past, and in the rearview,

like I triggered it, a phosphorus streak

and white flash went off like one of those

big firework show carnations—

either a woman’s soul ascending to heaven

or the engineer signaling for help—

I woke Carol in the light of it.