A Drive Behind the Light

A dark road creaks, a crackling of ice-skulls under bruising rubber. Driving to the all-nite store --- need antacids. It's pre-dawn, an hour behind the light, those black hollows of the night where time goes blind. No one rides this deadened road, no car beams, or open-eyes gleam until the car drifts into the low hum of a forecourt. The neon Mini Mart has sunk inside an insane façade of purpose, lost as it is, in an electric trance. Nobody dwells here at this hour only the heavy-eyed-blue-heron man. After the purchase, he disappears into a cubbyhole of shadows. Back home, the grinding jaw of a garage door seems to awaken a lick of daylight, not here, but in the back of my mind.