Night Driving

Heavy wheels hissing along dark
street-- a narrow stage, 
and most of it illusion.
Reflected streetlights slide 
down the rear windshield 
at one per second intervals,
golden orbs descending:
repetitive yellow leaves
punctuating winter's advent.

Gray shadow bus stop man 
boxed in Plexiglas 
leans forward on the bench to stare
into my window
as if he searches for a face he knew,
as if he waits
not for a bus, 
but for that face.

Hitting the Bottle

This is the prologue that Scheherazade
forgot to weave into her nightly tales:
How the genie crafted his own prison,
pursuing a predilection for glass and bottles,
passed on through generations of his family. 

Over time, he shaped the opaque curves,
inscribing them with spidery ideograms
and arabesques, the better to conceal
the contents of the jar, etching old maxims, 
false slogans, right responses on the surface. 
He looked for ways to thicken the glass walls 
so they would not admit much light: selected 
just the right-size cork to seal his secrets in,
shut prying insight out. And finally, consumed
by his own artistry, he allowed
himself to be sucked in to his invention,
immured himself completely in his handiwork.

Nor does the story end in epilogue
relating his regret--No paragraph about
his blurred palm pressed against the amber pane,
groping for other's hands to help him out, 
assuming another chanced to wish it--No
final unfolding of epiphany, 
the moral of the tale revealed too late: 
not even a genie can communicate
or grant anyone else's heart's desire
from his retreat so deep inside the bottle.