Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

Steve Newton
DRIVING WITH ABSENT FRIENDS
Sometimes I ride through the night with friends
Who have gone away, in the cars we used to drive
All those years ago. Summer crickets in the trees or
Snowflakes on the windshield, we might as well
Be sailing on the far side of the galaxy, which was
A game we used to play, pretending our car was
The Enterprise, and all of us part of the crew.
Now they all have been beamed up to a place I
Can‘t go, a world where they no longer grow older,
Leaving a man with a gray beard and bald head,
Missing people he laughed with as a young man,
Never knowing at the time that this was the moment
On which a life could turn, a spoke around which
Memories would circle like leaves in an October wind.
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