The road is a sleeping cottonmouth
With rain-wet scales.
My headlights splatter
Against a limestone escarpment – 
Menacing, indifferent.
The road signs, armless scarecrows
With motley faces,
Nod hieratically as I pass.
On the radio, a gin-soaked balladeer,
Reminding anyone who’ll listen
That love is a kick in the shins.
He sings in time with the wipers.
I am going nowhere,
Which is where I started from.
It is a letter I am writing
With every turn of the wheel:
A letter not to be sent,
But folded up neatly and tucked away
In the great gray envelope of the hills.