Virginia Highway
Waiting on a Friend
As I fly upon a Virginia highway,
near Tappahannock,
rain spreads its webbed fingertips
across my windshield.
From a Vivaldi choir
hiding in tall pines
angels descend
readily in unison
one by one
like locusts of serenity.
Each angel climbs inside,
between kidney & spleen,
pancreas & bladder,
huddled between lungs & spine.
My liver a Baroque viola!
The sky drops billions of angels!
Cars ahead spray fragments,
newly born angels,
by hundreds of thousands
against my hood & fender.
Then, suddenly, through fissures
from granite clouds, splinters
of sunlight lacerate scrub pines
up ahead & drag a golden handkerchief
from the horizon’s worsted wool pocket
across the rain-soaked highway.
(For Ron Noel: 1955-1998)
You’re late.
But that never stopped you before.
Maple leaves hiss
in the cool evening breeze.
Your chair’s uncovered
as Keith & the boys wail
from the echo shed.
Keith’s butterscotch Telecaster
etches hieroglyphs inside maple pods
helicoptering the darkness.
I tell you,
I’m looking forward to this evening:
fireflies stitching a cocoon
around night’s dark liquid.
We’ll talk about new troubles, old desires,
& where we’d like to be in twenty years.
Yes, I’ve got the new spring brew on ice.
& just listen to those gypsy frogs
teasing eggplants in the garden,
those crickets dreaming below the basil.
You’re missing all the fun.
Please hurry.
It’s starting to get lonely.
Alan Britt has published over 3,000 poems nationally and internationally in such places as Agni, Bitter Oleander, Bloomsbury Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Christian Science Monitor, Confrontation, English Journal, Epoch, Flint Hills Review, Gallerie International (India), Kansas Quarterly, Letras (Chile), Magyar Naplo (Hungary), Minnesota Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, Northwest Review, Osiris, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Poet’s Market, Queen’s Quarterly (Canada), Revista/Review Interamericana (Puerto Rico), Revista Solar (Mexico), Roanoke Review, Steaua (Romania), Sunstone, Tulane Review, Wasafiri (UK),and The Writer’s Journal. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. He has published 16 books of poetry. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
