Keeping Your Distance

Keeping your distance is what you do best,

although it is also what I totally

cannot do. But I am trying, I am

trying. Distance is what the needle shows

as the car runs and runs, eating up miles

like dessert; the needle, flicking at sixty,

seventy, a straight pointing thing that jabs

air and my heart—breaking down from carb

overload and the stress of this learning.

I am learning what Americans do so well—

staying out of each other’s hair, far far

away, not even a voice on the voicemail,

mail reduced to e’s and digital flashes

like the flashing of turn signals. I am

turning sixty soon myself, like the engine

revving past Highway 101 speed limits,

past the brute Pacific, its blue and marine life

hidden under the blanket of sunlight

on my left. You are America, sweet

brown grapeland, alien mustard seed, transplanted

Europe and Asia, cultivated,

wild, exotic, as native here as almost

anything—like me, like me. The needle

points homeward, keeping count of distances

traveled, we two on separate roads.

This land produces the story I am telling you.