The Rushes

On a windy day, 

I want to drive aimlessly

In bursts of speed

Down furtive roads
that curve the creek
and skim the leaves,

a frictional physics

compounding the whispers

of secrets leaping

through the air 

I want to hear 

the tar traps blistered 
by the sun 

snapping and cracking
beneath my tread
like a teenage girl 
and her pink wad of gum 
as I'm flung, whisked, 
borne along

Until I reach an outer realm
where the crow is king
of his mailbox throne,

the address blocked 
in a five digit code,

a blankness there
as if to say:

You'll get where you need to be
or you're going to stay lost,
my friend

I want to feel the road
run rough,

forget its manners,

fall into ruts
and gravel, dirt and dust,
the car's shocks bewitched 
into a state of 
astonishment,

with all the flux
of my reactionary atoms
flipping their polarity

I want to revel
in this silken husk:  
sweat beneath my arms
and breasts, 
glazing two thighs
like an axel grease,
as my fingers keep slipping
off the wheel
to taste the air outside

But the wind, alone
for four billion years,
is a lover indifferent
to the lure of my skin,
while the treetops 
toss and flounce 
like jealous rivals
with feathers in their mouths

So my vision bends--
scales, skirts, ascends--
until every hay bale  
is Rapunzel's hair,
neatly bound with
fraying ends

While mine's a coarseness
running free,
a comet's tail torn away,
my heart the pedal 
my foot must squeeze 
as consciousness pulls
at the speed of storms,
still far far ahead