NIGHT DRIVING

James Appelby

At the horses, I should have stopped.

Bigger than any daylight horse and saddled

by their own shadows they had crossed some fence.

Two of them in the road. But I drove through,

darker until my headlights bounced

from tarmac to the branches of the verge

and hung there somehow. To my left invisible

the sea to Ireland but only the lanes

hypnosis of road-markings and me

following each suggestion and the stag

facing my car at the bend.

Someone hasn’t learned the dark.

Daylight I cede an asphalt vein

to primates in my world.

At night: my hedge and track, my herd,

my waiting at the bend. Your hurtling box,

its wheel made to stake a lung:

I wait for that and must be paid to pass.

Someone snapped fingers at my ear. I braked.

The car clutter threw itself at me.

In the road the stag looked up unwilling

even to spit its cud. And I admired him:

antlers poised as a synapse, all weight

cut from the dark at the centre of the road.

I think I admired him enough. At one pace,

from standing, he jumped a wire fence,

and from the colourless crop fields

permitted my engine to start.