Torn from a Tucked-Away Album    
 
The wheel responding to your touch and our eyes meeting
between curves that could hairpin with little warning.  
between our awed takes on the tattered umbrella October
lowered over long stretches of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
She had dyed it red, gold, orange, and yellow, then tied
the leaf-woven cloth and dipped it with more abandon-
ment than care in copper, burnt umber, a bit of black,
and a cornucopia of greens that were weighted toward
the blue only certain evergreens can wear.. Fall’s woods-
smokey scent wended its way through vents and stirred
into a medley of leather, exhaust, and the musk of motel-
anticipating sex.  You reached to turn off  soft rock
so we could bridge the growing distance with chat,
but the sudden flesh of hills that rolled and dipped
to brown and black cattle ruminating on grass too green
to be real commanded attention, and another moment
we wouldn’t get back went out.  Beauty will trick you,
if you let it.  The perfume that yins and yangs under
a natural awning over a meandering two-lane designed
to slow.  Trick is not to let it get you so drunk, you
wind up at the bottom of a ravine.   Still, some mistakes
are too delicious to regret..  Like loving too much, too
soon, or too late.  Like all the above.   Like tripping
body and soul an entire week, only really seeing
colors and textures and possibilities.  Learning new trees
and cows and falls.  Moaning and sighing as one
up, down, and around silk hills and satin valleys
at night with the lights on.  Not just to reach a summit,
but for the journey.  Forget for once where it may end.
ride                                 baby                              ride.

                              (c) Phyllis Jean Green, 2007

 
  
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