The moving target

You were a moving target
and I the arrow, embedded.
You always liked to drive--
when you were angry you'd
drive all night from Sacramento
to Salt Lake City, have breakfast
and drive back home. Of course,
home was wherever you were.
It was where you worked.

One morning I stumbled out of you
while you were downstate working.
I was drunk with new life, and I
was born on the move.
What emerged from necessity
flowered into beauty.
I have always loved the freeway,
the salty desert, the faded motel.
A place that the wind might sweep up
and carry away at any moment.

When I get up in the morning,
on my way to work I think:
"I'm just going to keep driving."
In a few hours I'll be somewhere entirely new,
a place free of the weights of the past.
And in a few days I'll be somewhere old,
a place that brings tears unaccountably.
I'll slip that old tape in the deck
and feel the waves of memory
crash around my head like a breakwater.

Sometimes I drive all night,
looking for something, and then
coming home in the darkness I see
two points of light, inexplicable, unwavering.
Two lanterns holding fast
though you'd expect the inky night
to wash them both away.