Scene from a highway in the desert, 1989, first draft. I let the car drift some, eye your uncomfortable pose and profile, the postures of long drives, shifting numb and sore parts when you can no longer sit them. Foot on the dash, foot on the dash, X hours or so from some somewhere now, only half aware when I change lanes half accidentally, vision fixed in the distance, identifying wildflowers. Then I almost touch your leg but something stays me, the economy of love in close quarters, a learned thing, a contrast I've marked quietly alone, of the small rented spaces we've slept in, intense even sometimes in this tiny capsule, but hurtling uncertain to the unfurling forever of fear. Which it does to me, the desert, has effects, makes me mark things needlessly, the immensity and breadth of who I guess, overamplified, overconnecting, makes me see all small simplicities significant and substantial, makes me seek out symbolism, search in the symmetry of your self and lost statements of the self, these words that hiss or make snake sounds, but it feels holy almost, though I don't say so, a native sense with non-skeletons and headdresses, no projections found in thunderclouds shaped by soundless lightning, it is an extra sense, a Pentecostal thing, unnameable and great, an immortal unknowing, sacred and ancestral and real and only felt here when the sun falls, only felt here now where the otherworldly haunts of coming dust descending from immeasurable spaces to more immeasurable spaces, an ancient endless desert sprawl, anarchic, forever, interrupted only by this highway running west, some wound maybe or a bandage, depending on how you look at it, or maybe just what must marry the two vast expanses, a mirror reflecting both sides but our path more than anything, but who cares what, a bridge through the mystery and a place where your watch doesn't work, a guide through wider spaces and a magnitude unclaimed except in concrete to the place we might claim one day, someday, you and I, for us, when we get to wherever it is we are going, and you speak one flower named love, a single landmark out there, a memorial now, and the landscape that always passes but never passes does finally, and we see time again, remember the mirror pointing backwards, all of a sudden watching the paintbrush shrinking in the last light, and then I think again to touch your leg, something stays with me, some voice, yours and mine, combined, the rain comes saying quiet, first and then just sit, so I crack my window just so, almost close my eyes and almost let go of the steering wheel but don't move, it feels impossible for me to crash the car while we're in it.