Behind the Wheel
Behind the Wheel
Who’s behind the wheel of this self-
Driving car I’m taking home from the show
Because the presence of another human
Being is sometimes more than I can bear?
Someone must be or how else could this
Wheel move so subtly left and right,
Keeping us headed straight? Maybe
My driver is the missing man whose face
I saw on fliers plastered to power poles
At Ocean Beach. Last seen in September,
I don’t see him now either but sense
His presence. Or maybe it’s the boy who
Got shot in Lucky Alley, the shrine to whom
Grew up overnight, white and yellow
Candles like morels and chanterelles
Appearing under trees after rain, under
A mural of him in a flat-brimmed Niners cap.
Or is my driver the woman I saw nodding
Off off Market who, later that same night,
Died? We were deep into the next day before
Another addict noticed. One of them or
One of their kind must be driving me home.
I can tell they want to talk to me, to tell me
Where we can find his body (washed up
Amidst rocks in a cove accessible only
By boat south of Pacifica), or who it was
Who shot him (a cousin who knelt to light
A candle at the shrine), or what it felt like
Thinking she was seeing God only
To be lifted out of the warm bath of fentanyl
And dissolved into the All. But they lost
Their voices when they died, these dead
Who, surprised at the high cost
Of living in heaven, came back
To drive the living over the earth.