How Long Could I Have Been Weightless?

After the smooth up-pull the car dove fish-efficient
in the tractor-trailer’s wake. By then the thick wheel

cuts had tapered down the long, curved grade then vanished,
leaving undulations in the drifts.

All the way from Montreal through French-toned 
Vermont we’d held to, mostly all alone,

through night-time Massachusetts, the Berkshires 
rhythmic now, the rise and fall of roadways

lunglike, up and down, the black outside squelching
with each splat. The snow fell lazy-seeming

but the mass had force to it, a will thrust like those 
of sea currents, and in the down rush the car’s

back end began to flex. The side-muscling
came in series, ripples, quivers, pulse,

and I was in it counter steering while
the coffee spilled in the careening

into, through, and out of, what the frost-dimmed
lights could see: all murk then,

the whole world untrustworthy, murk and 
splat, and splat and speed, and ridges:

the hand wheel backlit by dials,
the fingers and their grips

the road itself a reef and I was skidding, skidding,
tread and road unbonded into flight.

How long could I have been weightless?
Does it matter now?

I reach now to recall what flew by me:
trees in kelp shadow, gelid embankments

snow shoals, formations of a world
so much like ours, just under water,
glimpse of where we’re headed
by degree.

Four wheels on the snow again,
clutching, shifting, easing down

compression bracing on
momentum’s rush I saw it:

deep snow swashed in fan pattern
to the breadth of the road

the white rig turned over,
red stamp on the side of

it: strike of harpoon. What fluke 
of luck had saved me? Which flake

launched me to air/water,
racing my breathing, slowing me down?