A Green Sportscar

Brian Patten


for Mal Doft, racedriver

...And later, to come across
those couples in gleaming green sportscars,
riveted with steel and sprinkling with dawn;
and, still shaking in tarpaulin hoods, the rain
spills onto their faces
as the daylight exposes their E-type deaths.

...And later still, to discover
inside him, something has been moved:
She stretched out across him, breasts
pointing toward dawn, who found her last kick
in the sound of the skid on tarmac
of the green-steel coffin in its quiet field.

...And finally, to understand them,
they who have been switched off permanently;
are so very still. You would think them asleep,
not dead, if not for the evidence, their expressions
caught at dawn, and held tight beneath
this accidental incident.