Driver’s Seat
By Douglas Matthew Crotty
Carriere MS
Sharks swimming in e-fashion over
manta rays
in an endless, fluid motion could not
hold my attention
as I stared at the computer screen in
my cold, crowded home.
I grabbed my keys, and without
announcement, headed toward the causeway.
When I arrived on the south shore,
dark threatening rain clouds greeted me.
I parked; and faced the churning lake
as it heaved its might at the seawall.
Near the breakwater of reused chunks
of concrete,
a bird hunched uncomfortably on a
wrinkled strand of rusty iron.
The clouds rolled thunderously as I
studied the bird.
He flicked his frail wet head while
the spray
separated and soaked his feathers.
I didn’t want the bird there.
He belonged on an oak or magnolia
branch,
surely not on a lariat of twisted
iron.
I looked over at ajet skier carving
his aqua sculpture,
and when I turned back to my friend
on his cold perch, he fled.
I was glad; and I watched him fly
high and away, and thought
of how liberating it must feel to
relocate so effortlessly.
I’d come to think it off and, after a
while,
I realized I wasn’t doing much
thinking.
I was taking it all in, and I felt
alive.
I lit a cigarette, slowly exhaled,
and laid my wrist on the steering
wheel.
I was in the
driver’s seat.