Tuesday poem #620 : c. a. r. rafuse : too exhausted to write after just barely escaped a violent death

 
think of one of those unsettling
car versus car
horror'esque movies,
a one eyed SUV tailgated me

just after dusk on sunday
on my way to navan,
after he wouldn't pass me
on that indifferent stretch of road
i applied my RED brakes so
then gave him the finger
out my knight highlander window

(an hour later now
(i think, i should not have done so

for then he passed me
and stopped right in front of me
good lord i thought ...
then reversed
to be at least one accurate gunshot away ...
after two minutes
yes he waited that long
he began to drive ahead
then picked up speed.

when he'd got far enough
i too continued,
when he was seven or eight hundred feet in front of me
i saw he stopped & lingered at the four way,
oh no ! ... so i pulled over to the side
and let three or four cars pass ...
then watched he turned south
and those cars turned south
and i turned south there too,
that turned out to be another mistake.

BUT I THOUGHT no he won't know me
it was dark ...
but ... then ... ahead of those five or six cars i saw him turn
sure enough twenty seconds later after i'd passed where he had turned
there he was
pulled in behind me
thus began
the next act of my horror movie ...

rural eastern ontario are GORJUSS secondary roads
are far between, intersections.
that night, as if life had reasons other than my own reasons
those cars in front of me turned hither in the dark
so that we were two alone again
his single headlight
tailgating.
i already mentioned
this rural setting,
i couldn't help but think
of a single crow gun report that i would never hear
ended all my hopes of publishing
even a chapbook, read by seventeen people
i actually did, that's what i thought ...

when i came so to the intersection
THE FARTHEST CORNER OF THE SQUARE AROUND THE CITY I LIKE TO DRIVE
there were a number of cars thank god,
i jerked so to the right which seemed to spook him
so, he violently turned left
that i saw in the rear view mirror
as i sped sped sped
along this south axis of my graph toward the city.
then i saw him turn around
way behind me, and turn toward me again.

by then i was a kilometer ahead.
but i could read his thoughts,
his one dreadful headlight.
immediately after i crested the first hill
i suddenly lulled and sharped my brakes
and swerved into a dairy farm,
all the empties in the back
rattled like caged christmas lights
i expertly tore around a handsome long barn
(i should mention here that i used to drive a taxi
all the way around
then killed my lights
and parked beside a HEAVENLY tractor
a ways away from, facing the highway,
a leonard cohen bus but different i thought.

and thought to myself
while my limbs shook
that if he spots me
well i'll cross that bridge when i come to it.
and as i sat there and looked around
at the large corn trailers
and three or four other tractors parked in the dark
like huge sleeping herbivores
and the ceiling fan i could see turning
inside that enormous prosperous barn

didn't i imagine a kindly farmer
come out of nowhere
and tap my window and friendly like ask
can i help you,
and i looked at him
hoping he noticed my shaking
and as best i could
i tried to explain
there's a lunatic on your highway trying to kill me.

and imagined his stoic saskatchewan response,
for i have known a lot of farmers
they tend to be kindly and quiet and helpful and BRAVE
and i imagined him saying
just a minute,
and walked to his pickup and gathered a rifle there
then sauntered back,
and through the window said
i'm stu what's your name ...
and by the way don't worry
if that sonofabitch shows up
he'll be fucken sorry.

i sat there for ten minutes.
eagle eyed watching for a one eyed car.
i waited until
all my vulnerable canadian fear disappeard.
until my mind kicked
into napoleonic resolve,
that tactically how
i might in the end win this war to the death.
that i'd brave to continue west
then turn north toward cumberland
at the single house there in the middle of nowhere that i've come to know as a landmark.

and anon i did and thank god.
peace o peace returned so
so that i was able to laugh at myself.
he was gone.
and turned my mirth then into great self knowledge
if i may say so myself
I THOUGHT
fuck, i truly am sexist
have been writing about this
all along as if he must have been a he
but what, if he had been a she

& nevermind !
what if that driver
in fact had been a dripping divorcee
and poor her she'd been trying to chase me down
to beg me to marry her,
unlikely sure,
but so is having been born at all
also after all isn't life stranger than fiction,
just consider the platypus
that have poison ink in their
little thumbs

then i thought of all the different farmers
i mentioned that i've known
and how
at my moment of peril
as if returning to the river where i was born
sat in the dark next to a barn
and let my heart settle and my mind settle
and thought of those kinds of men
i always wished i'd been mre similar to

it's time this poem ended
before i convince myself
that, giving everyone the finger
so, risking violent death
is a later convenient way to
ruminate about canada,
and love.



c. a. r. rafuse lives in ottawa. originally from winnipeg, he has led a ferociously peripatetic life including stops throughout canada, africa, asia, and the west indies.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan