We are on the New Jersey Turnpike
            traveling south to home as rain
            drenches us; it’s a dark tunnel of drench
            at seventy miles an hour
            on cruise control,
although we are dry
to the bone and riveted forward,
            fixed on the fateful road mist
            of tandem semis whose drone
            doo wops to NPR, pushing us into
Delaware and nightfall
as the tunnel, now a stadium’s
            cantilevered weather roof, opens
            on our right to a carnival sunset,
            long layered splotches of yellows,
            blues, and lazy grays, uneven
            as lava flows.
And then before us
            banks of north-bound headlights form
            into phalanx and mirror back ourselves:
            we are the longest reciprocating
            convoy in the history of the world,
we are a giant piston sucking up
the earth’s ancient treasures and
we think we are running on rain.

These mysteries are not as deep
            as those draped ceremoniously
            this morning across the shoulders
            of our beauteous grand daughter
            just graduated from Smith,
cajoled with dignity and humor and love
            to go forth and be human and
            a woman of infinite promise
            as she has already proved to be,
nor do we doubt in any measure that
if anyone can get us in out of the rain
it will be she.

ART LESSON AT THE NATURE CENTER