Traveling

With lines from Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery

3

see the light traveling as we travel
through the pines
off the edge of the highway
           racing as if the true place
of rapid disintegration of image
and the place we long to inhibit most
is just past the white line
here                  yes
           here we see only postures
of the dream                 the green blue
and white of passing cars          
a deer’s disjointed body and our own
two feet planted in the dirty snow
                      as if the place we have been
abandoned could be the place
we thrive                     
           where you
are my beautiful defiance           streaks and long
slanted shadows and later a distant glow
town lights spinning wheels                the low sounds
of things            we did not know lived

— Natalie Peeterse