Donald Platt: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

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Poem Written in Winter after Midnight at a Gas Station in Poe, Ohio

 

                        Death has always

been here in the blind spot of my driver’s side wing mirror

                        as I travel west

 

on I-90, cruise control set at eighty. Death is the pair of headlights

                        that follows me

these five hundred miles between Albany and Cleveland. One hour ago

 

                        I passed a semi

on the left in thick traffic but didn’t see the sign that said LEFT LANE

                        ENDS. The truck couldn’t

 

change lanes to let me through. I had to floor it, hit

                        110 miles per hour

as I squeezed between a concrete barrier and the braking truck

 

                        with inches to spare.

Life is the adrenalin rush when you have passed so close to death

                        that all you smell

 

is its diesel exhaust. Life is the bright crescent moon that waxes,

                        hangs above

the horizon, rises. Life is the long litany of towns on my night journey

 

                        west—Schenectady,

Amsterdam, Herkimer, Utica, Rome, Verona, Cicero, Canastota,

                        Cazenovia, Chittenango,

 

Memphis, Montezuma, Waterloo, Canandaigua, Avon, Albion,

                        Angola, Dunkirk,

Chautauqua, Ashtabula. Names so freighted with history or euphony

 

                        or dissonance that they are

larger than life, larger than any small town could ever hope to be.

                        Let death be no more

 

than the Dead Man’s Curve near downtown Cleveland, that not quite

                        ninety-degree turn

marked with transverse rumble strips and yellow caution signs that tell me

 

                        to slow down

to 35 miles per hour. One hundred thousand vehicles take that curve

                        every day.

 

Death is a daily event that we will live through or not. I stop

                        for gas with only

fourteen miles left in my tank and see a cube van filling up

 

                        at the pumps. Across

its thin, orange, aluminum hide is printed in an arc of blue letters

                        POE EMS,

 

which I misread for a split second as POEMS. How wonderful

                        to think

that there is a vehicle whose only cargo is poems. That it will deliver

 

                        poems

to the loading docks of box stores. But then I realize that it’s

                        an ambulance

 

offering Emergency Medical Service. It carries all of us

                        who are hurt

and in pain. Those with broken arms, legs, or collarbones.

 

                        Those suffering

heart attacks or strokes. Those inhaling slowly through oxygen

                        masks their last

 

breaths. Poems, too, should be vehicles that carry all our suffering,

                        our exhalations, exaltations,

our living, our dying. They, too, should heal us. I get back on the interstate

 

                        in the early hours

of the morning. When I nod off, I wake to rumble strip, that raucous

                        rock music I keep driving to.

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Donald Platt’s ninth book of poetry, Tender Voyeur, will be published by Grid Books in the fall of 2025.His eight previous collections include Swansdown, winner of the 2022 Off the Grid Poetry Prize, One Illuminated Letter of Being (Red Mountain Press, 2020), Man Praying (Free Verse Editions / Parlor Press, 2017), and Tornadoesque (Cavankerry Press, 2016). His poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, The Nation, Poetry, Yale Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, Tin House, Iowa Review, Southern Review, New Criterion, and Paris Review, as well as in Best American Poetry 2000,2006, 2015 and 2025. He is a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and three Pushcart Prizes. He teaches in Purdue University’s English Department.  

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                                                      Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940. Oil on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, NYC.

Comments

[Thomas O'Grady]

This a keeper! Those jagged tercets carry the poem's arc wonderfully. Very rich!

[Bill Nevins]

Love this poem about poems, and death, and the highway of life!
"Life is the adrenalin rush when you have passed so close to death

that all you smell

is its diesel exhaust. Life is the bright crescent moon that waxes,

hangs above

the horizon, rises.

Wow. Brilliant. Recalls for me both Terry Allen's song "Truckload of Art" and Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium". Thanks!

[Eileen]

Excellent!

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

This poem doesn't let us off for a minute. I'm exhausted, but relieved that the semi slowed down to let you in, even at 110 mph. If only everyone were to be looking out for those around them. The journey through all those towns of Central New York, so familiar to me, filled your car with poems. POE EMS should fill every vehicle.

[Sr. Leslie]

I felt like I was in that car with Donald as we “squeezed between a concrete barrier and the braking truck” and passed through that “long litany of towns”…and what a beautiful line:”How wonderful/to think/that there is a vehicle whose only cargo is poems.”…Yes, poems do have the power to heal and this is certainly one of them…Thank you Donald and thank you Terence…

[Terence Winch]

Leslie---thanks for the comment. Always good to hear your voice.

[Clarinda]

The momento alone of this wonderful
Poem will carry me thru my own death-defying day, which of is every day when you are 86 yrs old! Thank you both!

[David Beaudouin]

Wow, what a wonderful American poem, full of jagged restlessness and vehicular edginess, all conveyed with a lyrical sense of measure that begs to be read aloud twice. Thanks, Donald & Terence, for this road trip of the heart!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for tuning in, Clarinda.

[Terence Winch]

David: thanks for the comment.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Lovely, amazing poem. A truck full of emergency poems would be a great idea; much needed now. Thanks.

[Alan Abrams]

ho boy this hits home. cannot fathom why my own guardian angel has been so indulgent. (ever fall asleep on a motorcycle and wake up to the crunch of tires on gravel?)

[Jack Ijams]

Hi Don,
Great catching up at SM this past weekend. I haven't read many poems lately despite the focus SM had in our years to read, dissect and share viewpoints on the meaning conveyed which helped us to think critically as well as rise to the challenge of writing a poem, in our case a sonnet with all it's structural requirements. All the best to you and look forward to reading more of your poetic talent. All the best, Jack

[Gillian lonergan ryan]

Oh wow ..loved this journey..I was holding my breath as I read it for the first time ..
Looking forward to reading your next work ...

[Kelsey Wort]

Wow, what a beautiful poem. Don, as always, I leave your poem feeling surprise and more embodied in my daily life. Cheers to another wonder publication!