Dreamroads

There is the driving we do in the daytime, the driving we do in the nighttime, and the driving we do in dreamtime. Who does not have recurring dreams of driving too fast on a curve or in a car without brakes or some other perilous condition? A late poem from Adrienne Rich offers a passenger's experience of dream-driving.

Ansel Adams (Road, Nevada Desert, 1960)

Incline

Dreamroad rising steeply uphill; David is driving. I see it turn-

ing into a perpendicular structure salvaged from a long metal

billboard: we will have to traverse this at a ninety-degree angle,

then at the top go over and down the other side. There are no

exits. Around is the Mojave Desert: open space. D.’s car begins

to lose momentum as the incline increases; he tries shifting into

a lower gear and gunning the engine. There is no way off this

incline now, we’re forced into a situation we hadn’t reckoned

on—a road now becomes something that is no road, something

designated as “commercial space.” I suggest rolling (ourselves

in) the car down the steep dusty shoulder into the desert below,

and out. For both of us, the desert isn’t vacancy or fear, it’s life,

a million forms of witness. The fake road, its cruel deception, is

what we have to abandon.

(From The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004)