White Blossoms

Take me as I drive alone
through the dark countryside.
As my strong beams clear a path,
picking out fences, weeds, late
flowering trees, everything
that streams back into the past
without sound, I smell the grass
and the rich chemical sleep
of the fields. An open moon
sails above, and a stalk
of red lights blinks, miles away.

It is at such moments I 
am called, in a voice so pure
I have to close my eyes, and enter
the breathing darkness just beyond
my headlights. I have come back,
to think, to something I had
almost forgotten, a mouth
that waits patiently, sighs, speaks
and falls silent. No one else
is alive. The blossoms are
white, and I am almost there. 

Credit

From Collected Poems, 1952–1999. Copyright © 2000 by Robert Mezey. Published by University of Arkansas Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.