Going Through the Motions

--Grant Clauser

       

Eventually, the way you don't notice

dirt on the windshield until someone

sweeps a finger across, and it's clear

you've been driving through a fog

for longer than you know, it's easy

to get used to fear and anger, the kind

they served at the diner, closed for months

of course, or the kind you've been feeding

on alone in the back of the garage where

you keep tools you bought for some task

long abandoned. They lean against each other,

rattle from a wind through a cracked window

making a sound like skeletons would

if they could say what they thought of you

now. Hope is a thin membrane, maybe

patience too, a lake we float on looking down

to see what we lost, but seeing instead

our own unsteady reflection.