Ten Driving Poems 5. As Simple as Seagulls

Why do drivers of grey cars

not turn on headlights?

I dreamed last night that graders

bulldozed the bush above

my house in the Dandenongs.

I don't live in "the Hills".

I woke confused about the meaning

of dreams. A young man at a bus stop in

Rockbank stands out in the rain

short-haired, bespectacled,

wearing a fluoro yellow jacket,

looking intently at the road

behind me. I hope his bus

arrives soon. He looks perplexed.

I wanted music to dilute the sounds

of windscreen wipers forcing themselves

to sweep the glass clear, and to relax

my hands, tightly gripping the steering wheel.

I got The Firebird instead, raucous, too quiet

in parts, so turned it off. No silence but

I also got seagulls without music

heading purposefully across the bypass

from left to right. Yesterday, a larger crowd

had crossed from right to left.

What feeding ground attracted them?

What attracts me to this once-again

two-dimensional city, this grey-on-grey

work of modern art? I believe my car

has had a magnetic implant; all roads

lead to Melbourne, not Rome.