Well Over Sixty

by Michael Sofranko

After hours on the open road
Everything drowns in the hum of the radials.

I speed, half aware of the roadside rests,

Immersed in one long bluesy note —
The tires constant Om.

* * *

Once, to finally answer the question
Of, Who the Hell Am I?

I placed cryptic notes
In the margins of a dictionary.

It was like swimming for fitness.
I was seasick with introspection.

When asked where the White Whale swam,
Melville faced down a cartographer:

I’m not interested in the facts, he said,
I’m interested in the truth,

It’s not a place
You can point to on a map.

* * *

My daughter is deaf.
She says, I hear with my eyes.

Yet so many nights

I hear how to see,
How to drive the car and to where,

By listening to the words inside
The humming tires.

Sometimes I have nothing
But the words.

One night, halfway down
The Jersey coast,

A woman was waiting.
I wanted to drown in her hair.

But because of the words in the song I heard,
I knew to turn back.

* * *

I don’t care what the road signs say.
I’m doing well over sixty.

I speed, I spit, I sing
With the radio constantly.

If you ask me why
I gyrate in ways

Unbecoming my age.
Love, I say. The old urges remain,

And the feeling of every day
Remains plain,

Especially the pain…
Which is, of course,

The source of song.