The red of the Jeep in front of me doesn’t
match the splendor of the maples turned

for fall. I am driving to Harlem in pouring
rain, trying not to be lulled by my wipers

or distracted by the blaze of autumn leaves,
thinking about a man I’m starting to love

and a man who is starting to love me.
They are not the same person. Of course,

they are not the same person. Our eyes
are marbles and our hearts are seaweed.

We are curvature and deviation, parallel,
hard to control, unstraightenoutable.

I know I will solve nothing on this journey
but I continue to try. I rehearse the lines

of this poem. The Jeep is now a trailer
is now a Prius is now a stream of blinking

red. Massachusetts, Connecticut, the Hutch
and the Merritt. There is nothing else to do

so I keep driving, pay the tolls, listen to
old episodes of This American Life and watch

the sky darken with my headlights on.