The Long Drive Home from a Gig at 3 AM

The pavement is not real.
The stars like salt
spilt on black velvet
show no sign of life,
stare like glass eyes from space.


Sugar Blue whines
and growls his hollow ache,
moans his hot harmonica wind
through brass and plastic,
charges the vacant night with longing.


Everyone who
ever plays, stretches
for that note
missing from the chord
that binds us.


Sugar digs it out, slams it
down on the rough road
like black ice, scrapes
it against raw face
like sand paper.


Inside the wrenching bend
cowers a persistent yearning,
a burning loneliness that drives
each fragile breath
we pass from lung to lung.


We roll alone down this road
of night that never ends,
tumble like a cage of seed and thorn,
from deep within our pain
a stout and solitary joy begins.

Please visit www.mdfriedman.com to see more of M. D. Friedman’s work.