Ode to Sitting In the Driveway Until the Song Ends

Art by Lauren Farkas

Every day when my mother came home
from work she let out fantastic sighs, like
she’d been holding her breath through
ten traffic lights. Right after the sigh
I’d hear the pang of her keys on the table,
dropped as though they’d bitten her hand.
At exactly 4:13 PM this would happen,
every day, which is how
one Tuesday at 4:28,
having heard no key-spike and sigh,
I grew slightly worried and wandered
to the kitchen window to investigate.
Immediately, then, I filled up like a rain barrel
with joy because there in the driveway
was my work-wearied mother, wiggling
privately in her seat, saying dancing in the moonlight,
the only time to this day I have seen that woman
dance, not counting my brother’s wedding
when she allowed herself to be swayed
like a flag in the wind. But that Tuesday
in the driveway, I mean you should have seen it,
she had her eyes closed and her hands up
like a Baptist in church. Years later
I will be in the car with the Woman I Love
arriving at a party when that song will come on,
and the Woman I Love, instead of opening her door
and clicking off the radio, will reach
for my hand and listen. Before we leave the car
and celebrate the anniversary of a beloved friend’s
unlikely entrance onto this Earth, before
the Woman I Love raises a glass to my health and
before I raise one to hers, we will just sit in that car
and go nowhere for exactly three and half minutes.
You will be there with us too, Mother,
although you will not know it, and maybe
everyone in town will be sitting in their driveways
with us that night, watching the moon
get big and bright, etc.
Before the song fades out,
seven perfect raindrops will fall
on the windshield, and then we
will open the door and keep
our obligations, only then.

Wesley Sexton’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals, such as Poetry Northwest, Tar River Poetry, the Indianapolis Review, and the Greensboro Review. Also, his reviews have appeared in journals such as Story South, the Adroit Journal and The Rumpus. He holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and has received the Amon Liner Poetry Award for his work. Also, he once threw a Frisbee through the uprights from the 50-yard line.