It is night and the road is bending and fading

before me, blurring into

sharp reality at the nearside kerb, the threat

of a sudden journey’s end

perpetually startling.

 

The radio fell silent miles ago with the fall of the

leaves wracking in the slip-

streamed darkness. Only the blown-back bubble-glow

of headlamps and the

constellations of the dash betray your form.

 

We are all falling somehow you once said; through

our lives, and into sleep

together here and in my charge, falling forward

soundlessly, as in a low orbit,

towards the dawn.