Mushrooms, Splinters, and Thorns

Driver

Driver

I am the driver
fighting off sleep
on a lonely highway.
I look in the rearview mirror
and I notice
my mussed up hair
that only obeyed the wind
and my bloodshed eyes
like binoculars
peering into
the long distances
I have left behind.
It is no hard science
to see I am a woman,
a fact my mother
omitted to tell,
but still, I sit up straight
and drive on.



He Who Doesn't Hear

He doesn't hear me.
He just doesn't hear
anybody, but
he listens
with his sense of touch,
feeling the stones
and the thorns
on my path.
He tastes my ramblings
and tells me if
they are sweet or sour.
He observes the colors
inside me,
inside my liver, my heart,
with the kind of dedication
only I could imagine.