The Gray Hour - Cagibi

When I was little, my mother would say 
she hated driving at dusk, because 
for an hour or so there’s no contrast—
all is dust gray, velvet, moth-wing

gray, dimly interrupted with dull flitting
lights like shy bats. There’s the two of us 
driving our compact car down roads 
named Third Creek and Pine Hollow, among

old clapboard farmhouses, auto body
shops, hills like halved eggs—everything 
melting into formlessness as night’s mouth 
opened. Oncoming cars lurch out of furry 

sameness, headlights leering. I absorb
my mother’s tension: her taut wrists, jutted
neck, straining eyes. My only powers
are stillness, accompaniment. Then 

lights bloom: golden, coral, impossible 
white against blue-black sky, and cars glimmer 
in them like hard candy—cordial 
red and jelly green. The town, now merely 

two hills away, exhales orange mist upward 
as night lies down. My mother’s relief
is cool like evening, and I am grateful 
that for another night my helplessness 

has cost us nothing, as we drive unnoticed 
to our little brick house at the edge 
of disinterested woods, just the two of us.