Driving

Driving
Driving
He was forever driving
Day in
Day out
Into work
Off to the gym
Home
Driving
Circling the river
All the while
Listening to the radio
The all-knowing radio
The calm voices feeding facts
The all-encompassing facts
Arrayed in cultured accents
(Too few, Australian)
Day in
Day out
Driving
Listening

In the morning
The Highway
Hills and gumtrees
Used car yards and poor white houses
A morning world
Soft in sunlight
Shrugging off the veil of a dream
Hooded in a restless dew
So he wouldn’t always notice how squalid it was
How ugly

The traffic buzzing in parcels
The giant amber lights flashing
Massive trucks hauling containers
Off to distant depots
Lumbering up the hills
To glide down the slopes
Urban
Industrial
Poor

Then it was the morning news
An hour of politics and crime
Leading into the daily features
(Politics, politics everywhere.
Will it ever run out?)

Slip-waying onto the freeway
The whiz of the freeway
Or the whiz that was meant to be
But so often wasn’t
(Three into two doesn’t go)
The constipated crawl
A stop|start along the once
Beautiful foreshore
With the pelicans perched
On the floodlamps
Presiding mockingly
Over all the frustrated drivers
Like serene judges in a crowded court
Or poised high up
On the updraughts of warm air
Like hang-gliders
Equally white and still
In a hovering equilibrium
So unlike the constipated equilibrium
Of the congested freeway

All the while
All the way
All that talking
So much of it
Will they ever run out?
So much to say
So many opinions
Much more than you’d expect
From the program guide
Religion and books
Art and economics
And politics—like everything
Politics, politics everywhere
Overwhelmingly
All those half-truths wrapped in certainty
As if they were immutable
True
All those politicians
Feeding them half-truths
They’re so good at it
Is that what the world is now?
Conviction without doubt?
Where’s the real information?
The ambiguity that leads to knowledge
And understanding?
Truth?
Has that been drowned too in
This ocean of politics?

The curve onto the short bridge
The last release into the city
The gleaming city
Young and new-looking
With its glass and steel
Thrusting up into the sky
The light dancing off the towers
Some big
Some small
Some like they were only there
To sidle up to the others
So you could never quite
Comprehend their shape
Never define them
Monolithic
Ambiguous
As things in cities are meant to be
A place that completely subsumes you
Like an insect taking on the universe
But a sophisticated insect
Being it’s a city
No matter how provincial.

In the evening
Peak hour
Next to the railway line
The short run he’d miss
If he get away early enough
Or late
But which he often didn’t
And had to crawl along
Everyone wanting to turn against the traffic
Or with the traffic onto the short blocks
That were always filling up.

If early
Music
If late
More talking
Informed talking
In one of the few authentic accents
Though stuffed to the jowls
With moist gulps of air
So you’d think he might be drowning
Pompously

Before gym
Harried and taut
After
Glowing and relaxed
Though still sometimes aching in the chest
From a pain that would have to explode
Before he would think to have it diagnosed

The night drive home
At last
Toward the sea
The only one he loved
A beautiful drive through
The silver black silk
The calm voices
So smoothly slipping
Into the velvety darkness
Drifting in and out
Pacifically
The lights on the highway
Red and white
Dancing to a meandering rhythm
A right rhythm
A night rhythm
Lulled
By the glowing afterease of exercise

A swift drive
Uncluttered
Like the soft space
Gliding gently down into sleep
Soon crossing the high bridge
Looking down on the black water
With its reflected lights from
The old buildings on the left bank
The rowing club and bar
Red, white and green
Bouncing off the black water
Like a bowl of lapping oil
Thick and dark
Somehow brooding
All knowing
Soothing
Seen in flashes from the car
Speeding high over
The water running out to sea

And then
Home
In the apartment
Muted lamplight and dark corners
Home
In the hallway
Dumping his briefcase
Home
On the couch
Watching television

 

© Ian Lilburne 1997