Fast Ride

/ Issue 10.3 /

The West Side Highway morphs to verdant lawn
with brown-gold patches (horse manure? a barn?) –

lush green track down which we are careering
faster and faster, and no one is steering

or even driving: no hands on the wheel.
I scream. It comes out tinny and unreal.

No anger, though, and (can this be?) no fear.
Laughter. Leaping barriers, the car

plunges into the Hudson, down down down
through strange clear water. Does this mean we drown?

All gone before a single candid gleam
pierces the depths to light up what they mean,

this highway somehow changed to riverside
speedway. We’ve touched bottom but not died.

How frail it is, the guard rail in between
life and death, the waking and the dream,

the vertical where our waking lives are spent,
the horizontal that tells us what they meant.

Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas's new works include Piece by Piece (Paul Dry Books), Love and Dread, and her most recent book of poems, Pandemic Almanac. She is one of some forty translators of Nonnus's massive epic Tales of Dionysus (University of Michigan Press, 2022). Her new book of poems, Ghost Guest, will be published later this year.
Rachel Hadas

Also by Rachel Hadas (see all)

Author: Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas's new works include Piece by Piece (Paul Dry Books), Love and Dread, and her most recent book of poems, Pandemic Almanac. She is one of some forty translators of Nonnus's massive epic Tales of Dionysus (University of Michigan Press, 2022). Her new book of poems, Ghost Guest, will be published later this year.