We always take Route 15 South
to go back home, the Merritt Parkway
from central Connecticut down to
New York where the name changes
but not the road.  It is a long, beautiful
ride like dawn dewing on windshields
vibrating the air that breathes aloud
past our mile-per-hour car mumbling
to the engine and, occasionally, when
we have to increase the speed to pass
a slower driver, it laughs with lightning
in the dark where streams of light
penetrate and fall soundlessly upon
the approaching road, silent as a tree
observing until another driver’s bells
peal in annoyance that we’d resurrected
a desire not yet born but brimming
the containers, bursting the peaceful
night overflowing the moment, and
then disappearing into the moonlight
where shadows dance to an unknown
tune on my side of the fogged window
where I press my face and my breath
sings along to the romance songs on
the radio, the warmth bouncing back
in waves of comfort and near delight
until I go breathless.  

We pass the Mobil stations, each more
expensive than the former – only in
Connecticut, that is – the blaring white
lights blinding the stars above until
the murmur of each one scorches the night.  
We keep driving into the sheets of darkness
lit only by white lights across the median
and red ones burning in front until

New Jersey comes into view across the
too-lit Washington Bridge overseeing
the Hudson River like a Master over
his dominion of brown water and rumored
dead bodies where once strode the father
of America but now is littered by dump
ships and speedboats.  The Bridge loops into
view and depending on how adventurous
we are, we choose above or below
suspended in the haloed air like puppets
through a stranger’s fingers dancing like
bent chords for the steel beams gleaming
like a reverse arch blessed as the seat of grace
in a chaotic city, painted by aluminum
between water and sky two towers looming
over us with a structure so pure, so resolute,
so regular like a magisterial curve that swings
down and then up.  We continue our travels
in the cleft of the Bronx and the Palisades,
mighty cliffs whispering to one another in
the lapping waves of the Hudson, each more
majestic than the other but sliced indiscreetly
by harbors and scenic routes littered with
onlookers and tourists, highways and byways
from here to there as we swerve from left to
right earnestly attempting to avoid an
unnecessary collision of cars and trucks
alike honking madly like trapped bulls in
a corral of strained madmen attempting to
domesticate what cannot be harnessed until
we safely reach the New Jersey Turnpike


I-95, a dull and bland road mottled with
exits and lanes, towns and swamps reeking
of sewage mud and trapped wetlands like
a bygone reality dwindling in size as
Giants dominate with parking lots and
hotel suites, dark waters brimming New
Jersey shores from the Meadowlands all the
way to Newark as we struggle to hold our
breathes held captive from the New York
air we left behind on the Bridge, dotting
our lungs with car emissions and light
pollution like cheap souvenirs of the
Empire State only to be replaced with death
and dying skunks and garbage land fills filling
the mounds of dirt and refuse assaulting the
senses like smacked flies against the now
bloody windshield – the only condolences from
the wipers wet with tears from the night’s
stinging eyes until our sense of smell is lost
to the abhorrence of the Garden State, a
mockery in and of itself barreling from
lane to lane as the blackened road
moves on like a midst of apparitions and
premonitions of prior sojourns alike
white lines the crystal ball that hypnotizes
and prophesies of airports and Ikea’s
massive sign a lure for outsiders but
here is where I was born as we pass too
quickly and bestride Elizabeth overseeing
the bedlam of my childhood painted
like a Monet with memories and forlorn
dreams now wisps of industrial smoke
and oil tanks littering the outskirts with
the state of alert like bloodied warnings
of nuclear doom and mayhem, but we
pass unharmed along the longest stretch
of the night, the impatient anticipation
of being so near to home, yet still on the
bedeviled Turnpike, red-horned devils
prompting ahead in drunken stupor while
singing green fluorescent signals of
upcoming towns not yet our own, and
we sigh in frustration, attention depleted
from the three-hour-ride lingering long-
winded boundless and numb spread out
stretched out like a taut canvas of curvature
lines of décor designs aligning our trip
but the map is not folded in the creases and
the rustling is simply a caustic cry screaming
and patience is losing its grasp.

Exit 11 our final escape from the drudgery of
I-95 coming to an orchestral end as lights and
toll booths greet us for money a congenial
deejay of price for our grueling entrance to home
front in sight as urban Perth Amboy welcomes
us with police sirens and the laughter of night
that’s roaring with Latin music – meringue,
salsa, and reggae-ton – adorning the city that
doesn’t sleep though we drive up to the rear
of the house, so blue, so serene, so domicile
that we rarely hear anything else but the
lulling arms of our home sweet home.