The future hung over everything we did,
exchanging presents, as we liked to do,
books and nuts and chocolate, a canopy,
sound of bullfrogs and cicadas, over everything we’d done,
chocolate and nuts, books we talked about,
backroads, gas station blazing in the August night
we pinballed into, the restaurant with the singer,
tips in the jar, how I ate a cherry tomato.
Later, fog rose from the river,
settling on both sides of the windshield.
We drove past the point we couldn’t see
then opened the windows and blasted heat.
I wanted never to bounce back.
About Alison Hicks
Alison Hicks’s books include poetry collections Kiss and Falling Dreams, a novella, Love: A Story of Images, and an anthology, Prompted. Awards include the 2011 Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared in Blood Lotus, Eclipse, Fifth Wednesday, Gargoyle, The Hollins Critic, Pearl, Permafrost, Quiddity, and Whiskey Island, among other journals. She leads community-based writing workshops under the name Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio (www.philawordshop.com). She has recently taken up playing the cello again after a 30-year hiatus, and enjoys canoeing and camping in the back country whenever she can.
7 Comments
Alison, I love your poems and this one is especially moving. It so nicely paints a wonderful moment–as if on a fabulous getaway weekend you never want to lose from your memory…congrats!
I loved this poem and thanks to my friend Yvette got the opportunity to read and enjoy it.
Vivid imagery for me and that’s what I enjoy best. Beautiful piece of work here. Hope I have one of those getaway’s soon. I could use one!
How lovely! All the details in this poem leaning toward pinballing into that particular August night when the narrator “opened the windows and blasted heat.” I feel the heat.
Wonderful – posting to Facebook!
An evocative poem and a great poem to wake up to. I feel I’m there with the narrator
or want to be. Congratulations!
A perfect title for a poem about time. Excellent, Alison. “We drove past the point we couldn’t see”–and then it’s over.
Thank you so much for writing and sharing this poem, Alison. I loved many things about it, including the evocative extremes of weather–the August night, the fog rising, the unexpected blast of heat. You put me in those moments.