it’s the perfect night for driving. 
            The stop signs are sha-la-la-ing at the curves

of country highway – 
                         white lines beaming. Tankers blazing through country junctions, then nothing. 
This place, layers of pearly innards that make an ear

to listen:

I offer no resistance to such emptiness, to the BIG quiet.  
Dripping molasses. That’s what it is to drive

                 even above stone crunching wheels.

Piloting streets,

         past the footy field, war memorial, bakery, the only Vietnamese restaurant in town. 
Radio beamed in from Bendigo, slow.

                                              The past snug in the backseat. Wherever you turn it goes.

                      Compelled around the back ridges. The hairpin bends.

Let it ride.
High beams hitting stringybarks along unpaved road and

                              trunks flashing up as though under x-ray.

                    Still hot outside the rolled down windows. 
Fuck, you could drive on and on and on. 
Watch the sky run pastel,

                   until the engine is gasping –

tank coughing through last of its fuel.