We Are Highway Nights, Part I

Highway nights furnish themselves

accordingly

with the rusty silver crosses dangling

from hitchhikers’ necks.

They glimmer against the emerald blue backdrop

of a starlit sunset, a blade of light

slicing through night air to reflect

a planetarium dome,

splashing itself across the night sky.

(Phaeton begins his single day of work.)

Desperado, Highwayman, we are all hitchhikers.

Each one a criminal to his own star.

Highway becomes Gravel,

a Testament from Earth to Star

via the Gravel Highway. Do you see, my dear,

where the horizon’s pursed lips

signal the rise of the nighttime sky,

but the Gravel Highway continues?

‘Tell me, Desperado, Highwayman, where it is you are leading me.

This night has potential, can you not feel it?

An ebb, a ripple in the planetarium glow,

spreading from Polaris to Canopus

and back again.

So why do you not heed it?

You keep walking forward on this Gravel Highway,

and soon we will be past the horizon.

So tell me before we lose sight of home.

Phaeton is on his way may I please

take a look at the Highway that nurtured me all this time,

before the world burns?’ i say to my strict Desperado.

 

Our Father, who art in heaven,

has turned his face from the hitchhikers

but looks to me.

The morning foreshadows itself to the east, but

My Desperado still does not listen.

Can he not look around and notice that my Gravel Highway spreads one   direction only,

a barreling forward? But I suppose,

he is just as vulnerable as any hitchhiker any Highwayman,

as he is caught in the barreling forward.

My dear, have you seen the river that trickles

alongside our Gravel Highway? Don’t worry,

it hasn’t noticed you either.

 

Quiet now, it’s morning. Squint your eyes and try to see through

the sunlight, the sunlight

that blinds us, oh everything is so much clearer

at night. Phaeton is in the distance.

He’s given up already, and the City in Flames burns

beneath him, the Heaven in Inferno burns above.

We have very little time.

Do you hear me, Desperado? You must. I am

the only reason you still walk forward. You don’t look at me,

but you feed off my words. You cry sullenly, constantly,

silently, but you don’t look at me so that I will never know.

You are weaker than I, Desperado. You are the offspring

of this Highway

before it became Gravel. And home is no longer

in sight.

 

Author's Note

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