The Man in the Road

Driving in a kind of dark,

behind me the city-filled valley,

bowing in light.

Out here a kind of silence,

merely a measure of distance from the babel

and not the thing itself.

Someone could be shouting at me


from the dirt and gray dark 
beyond my headlights,

and I would never hear him.


Someone could be stepping out

from the dark and into the round,

yellow-dead eye of my headlights


and I would be looking at the radio


and not at him in the road.

He could be there, maybe alone,


just born out of the desert,

having wandered for days, skin

dripping with dirt and sweat


like rusty blood,

and this road

could be the wish he made days ago

before he fell once more to his knees

on the granite floor—

a rock 
he knew before only as countertop,

the polished, cold place


where water comes gleaming 
out of metal

when you wish it to.