Night Driving

You’re driving back from out of state.
It’s late at night; home’s far away.
Your headlights on the interstate
Give fifteen feet of not quite day
In blackness from the cloudy sky,
From hills ahead, from hills you’ve passed.
Each big, black mountain flying by
Looks no different from the last.
The road’s white dashes lull your mind;
You sing along to stay awake
With every album you can find—
Night driving’s more than you can take.
A sign appears that lets you know:
Two hundred miles more to go.

“Night Driving” first appeared in Snakeskin.

The Billboard

It’s propped along the route I roll—
A squatting square against the sky,
Atop a sturdy metal pole,
To tell me what new thing to buy.

A squatting square against the sky,
It blocks the airy, fluffy clouds,
To tell me what new thing to buy
To follow the unthinking crowds.

It blocks the airy, fluffy clouds,
A big sign saying come and shop
To follow the unthinking crowds
To buy that brand of soda pop.

A big sign saying come and shop,
Atop a sturdy metal pole,
To buy that brand of soda pop—
It’s propped along the route I roll.

“The Billboard” was first published by The Society of Classical Poets.

Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has been published in The Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, The Lyric, Westward Quarterly, Atop the Cliffs, Our Day’s Encounter, The Creativity Webzine, Verse Virtual, and The Asahi Haikuist Network, and his short fiction has been published in Nanoism and The Creativity Webzine.