Waking Up at the Wheel

I woke up behind the wheel and told my wife I had been talking to Good
King Wenceslas. A giant red ant wearing a crown figures in this story, as
do the taillights of an eighteen-wheeler. The difference between living
and dying and the mathematical certainty of one or the other happening
to all who have been small, shivering things, also included. The median
and the darkness of the southern tier, the rest areas seen and forgot-
ten, the deer timidly nosing their way past the scrub pine toward the
shoulder, the orange glow of the truck driver's cigarette in another poem
in Arkansas, they are involved as well. The conversation was simple.
The King asked me why I was asleep, and I told him I wasn't. I told him
I was seeing from behind my closed eyes and that he was a vision of great
importance. That's when my wife asked me a different question that
required my full attention, and I woke up, just in time to see two deer
about to make a bad decision.

Copyright © 2009 Christopher Kennedy All rights reserved
from Ninth Letter
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission