While I drive left-handed
you scratch at the white clouds
drifting out on the growth
of my fingernails, and
rub salient fire down tendons
toward fingers of gnarled roots
and less a hand, than work incarnate-
in essence of character. In lines, in
worried skin and flattened bones:
the misshapen unity of labor in lengthened phalanges.
You speak to me about how getting older means:
you can always remember a better time than now and
about the city of angels who never sleep,
staring open eyed, hazy with intangible halos.
How is mans great struggle now with society and no longer himself?
As the sharp angles of the road drive our skin to tight contact,
I find myself in the air between your breath and sweat slickened palms.