Driving Rains and a Radio
Rain on I-80 near Lincoln, Nebraska, heading east to the docks
of New York, torrential dawn rain flooding the asphalt
rivulets deepening, whirling, converging to hub cap high
bumper high rivers, now fender high, surging, and Billy Graham
preaching on the radio, high, windshield high, hood’s awash
as he’s quoting God’s words to Noah when the car leaves the pavement
swept east by the flowing flood waters to the raging Missouri
to bob around ox-bows with full grain barges, “Shenadoah”
now loud on the FM, shooting whitewater down to St. Louis
to the broad Mississippi - calmer, but swollen, a great liquid plain
flowing south past northbound riverboats, “Old Man River”
on the Memphis airwaves down though the delta to the Gulf, and on
out to sea, New Orleans broadcasting an old grainy voice on a 78 rpm
somberly rendering “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” to lull me to sleep
as night comes full of tankers from Galveston ...
awaken
in the rain
‘bout a mile from Key West
catch the swift Gulf Stream north, catch hornpipes and shanties
on the airwaves from Charleston, while brisk Southerlies and following seas
rock the car past galleons, slave ships, man-o-wars, the battle-scarred Merrimack
glimpsed in the rearview, a U-boat crew up for air as seas roughen into
the North Atlantic, “SOS, Mayday, Mayday!” on the C.B. now, Titanic going down
way out east as I ride the wake of a tramp packed with Irish into New York Harbor
past the ferry, many freighters and Lady Liberty, beaching half a day early in Queens
with the “Odyssey” ringing in original Greek from the speaker as the rains let up