Sebastian Schloessingk

          LEFT LANE


The contrails in late blue, their abridged lengths -
those inching on out, those from nowhere inserted -
were aligned, wherever, like single-minded
eels homing up a river. Night fell: a rabbit
after healthy zig-zagging in the headlights thought best
to sprint back under the tyres. Delicate, definite
sound - not troubling hard tyres but the soft brain
(in charge of a machine in charge of another).

Dawn broke cloudy, damp colourful trees, grey fugitive
ostrich farm ostrich on the road, pacing ahead
in the correct lane but viewed from a car behind
some uncertainty in the body language.