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Mark Stevick is a professor of Creative Writing at Gordon College in Wenham, MA.

Mark Stevick

Just Drive

On a given night at ten in summer

I am driving someone or other’s car

through wet turns in Essex, Manchester,

half expecting the road to disappear.

My window is open like the windows

in the lamp-lit houses I pass

where someone stands at a dark bureau

arranging or emptying a vase.

The night air is a radio tuned

to a voice out of Rome or Boston,

but the signal is weak, or it’s turned

down too low, like someone left it on.

Strapped in behind the pull of the engine

and the high beams, I begin to hope

my lane will lift up over the ocean,

right off the scale of any map.

But the moon’s tank is half empty

in the gaps where the overlooks are.

These roads all lead back to my driveway.

I’ll leave those borrowed keys in the car.

— Mark Stevick