I-5

Your friend has been thinking about
what amounts to a life. He tells you
about a series of moments: his car
on fire in the desert, his grandfather’s funeral.
Draws a wavy line through the points
of air where his words hang.
Says he thinks this might be enough.

Yes, you think, driving home late that night.
The winter is letting forth its fiercest rain yet.
Your only company on the freeway
is a parade of semi-trucks, whose wheels
send huge curtains of water
flinging themselves across your windshield.
Each one leaves you blind
for several immense seconds.

Yes, just moments, tiny opals scattered in the grass:
Yesterday’s squash peeled into
translucent strips, olive oil murmuring
in the pan. Flipping through the jukebox
at the all-night diner. The reading
in the warehouse lined with Christmas lights.
Laying in semidarkness, tracing the man’s
tattoos for the first time, your fingertips
light as dry leaves, his dead brother’s name
a meadow blooming across his
shoulder blade. Mint tea on the frosty patio.

To collect them, to gather them to you.
To string them together—a garland
of these moments, a rosary.
To run your fingers over it, to wind it
around your wrist. To make a living.

At the café last week the old woman
ordered her usual, told you
they used to go to Italy every year, but now…,
her husband quiet at the table.
So many train rides from Siena to the coast
and back have settled into wrinkles
around his kind eyes. The little towns
they’d stop in along the way, the others
they’d save for next time. Strung
like beads of light across the countryside.

You drive beneath an overpass
and for a split second the rain cannot reach you.
For a moment, silence. The concrete
arches its back. The freeway holds its breath.