Taking the Wheel

Lane blocked
Route closed
Try a new way

Pass over the overpass
to claustrophobia of possible lostness:
stuckness
at an unknown traffic light
(for the car must not move, must not move ...
and the gas pedal must not twitch).
Panic rushes in -- self fading away, senses swimming --
I swallow it down
to breathe as traffic light
frees me.

Inundated by halos of light and cascades of moving cars --
monstrous construction, like a World War II re-creation,
walled off on the roadside --
I employ tunnel vision to get me through,
concentrating in order to breathe at all,

holding feebly onto consciousness
against consuming terror --
that long-put-off dread of driving on complex highways
and on intersecting highways at night.

How far -- the destination?
How far?
Shaking all over,
I arrive.

Fearful again, later,
I make it back home,
suddenly changed,
stronger,
strong (!),
somehow having just recovered -- after decades --
the sense of having
rights.