Driving in a Storm, She Practices – a poem by Karen Paul Holmes

Driving in a Storm, She Practices  


She has given up predicting the weather
but has to catch herself now:
Will it be visibility zero 
going over the mountain like last time?
Icy rain hammers nails into the windshield, 
trucks rustle white mist from the road, 
her ninety-mile-an-hour 
wipers can’t keep up.

She’s learning to disappear time
by paying no attention to when 
she might arrive. 

Now sunshine, pavement barely damp. 
She breathes, Oh good.

But here’s another sleetstorm—
tires float, wanting to hydroplane.
She slows to twenty-five. 
Ungrips the wheel. It’s all good. 
Ahead, Wolfpen Ridge wears
a gray shawl fringed with hail.

She’s learning to stay present
by keeping her ear on the radio.
S-curves begin as La Bohème concludes:
Mimi is dying but dying beautifully. 
Violins and Rudolfo cry, 
and the little black car flies over
the mountain, tires singing on dry road. 
Clouds brighten to white. 

Karen Paul Holmes has two poetry books, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich). Her poems have appeared on The Writer’s Almanac, The Slowdown, and Verse Daily. Publications include Diode, Plume, and Valparaiso Review. She has twice been a finalist for the Lascaux Review’s Poetry Prize. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and spends time in the Blue Ridge Mountains.