Learning

Learning

By John Jeffrey

Rolling into the driveway, I slow the car

to a standstill in front of the garage door

when--even though I've stopped--the motion

detector clicks and light spills like milk over the car.

I shut off the wipers, the headlights, the air-

conditioning, the fans, the radio, the cell phone,

and then the engine. With the engine dies

the muffler's angry mutterings. Another hole.

After a few minutes of stillness, the light above

the garage ticks off. It's dark now, and silent

but for the soothing soft-shoe on the roof; even falling

from such height the rain has a gentleness.

Should I, too heavy for a cloud, be dropped

from the sky I would make a more demanding rain:

Blood-vivid, intense as a scream, I would destroy

whatever came between me and the destiny of that fall.

But the rain gives to me a sense of sequestration,

one hundred and seven cubic feet of untouched interior.

I won't go into the house yet, not yet to the television,

the phones, the answering machine, the computer--

networked to the office like a vein--the ominous

tick-ticking behind the refrigerator, the blown hall light,

the broken washing machine, the wasted mattress,

and the mildew-rotting basement, probably flooding

as I study rainwater meandering down the windshield,

now left, now right, now pausing to wait for another

then together continuing. Some, mid-flow, just stop.

Others never begin. I watch the water. I am learning.

I am a dangerous man.