Home Square Dance Wrenching the Wheel

Wrenching the Wheel

Something is moving up fast on your left;
Swerve ahead now, and behind there speed the miles
All jostling, all jockeying — tension, curve, and weft —
Weaving through the lanes of traffic, the styles.

Zoom on out and cruise away the while;
A touch of the pedal there evokes a surge
As flourishes and easing up on tone encourage
A banked storyline along the writer’s wiles.

Some poignant momentum moves brute weight along
A linearity where borders barely restrain
Anti-vocabularies grappling to belong;

Inside each vehicle, rival drivers strain,
And quarreling passengers set themselves careening —
Now high, now low — the overlying course of meaning,
Slang and sublime in quick changes of lane.