Cruising to work in gray dawn rain
I feel the traffic congeal
into a single organism,
the dead-end of evolution.

Radio news simpers. Flood
and war, law and politics.
The organism chokes on itself,
suffering from lack of oxygen.

On days like this I’m weightless,
a helium-filled object. Good thing
I’m not intrinsic to the crude
and dying organism formed

by the mile-long file of taillights
dappled down the highway ahead.
To better define myself I park
by the reservoir and stand staring

into the mist. Not like Avalon,
castles adrift, the Holy Grail
winking in a disciplined sky.
No, the bare bones of New Hampshire

ache with rheumatism, groan
with runoff. Back in the car
I point myself at the core
of the earth; but the traffic

skips me along like a flat stone
on water, and the long recession
of taillights illuminates only
the merest shrug of the mind.

———-
Delia Rainey is finishing her third year at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and is a poetry intern at The Missouri Review.