In the back seat of Clement’s red convertible
hair of leaves lifted by wind,
our eyes wept in the speed of nighttime
Vickie of bucked teeth, black eyes and spearmint tongue,
clutched me into her sharp adolescent bra
through hallways of full trees
Clement’s girl Cherine screamed at every curve
The air itself and swerving lanes
exalted us in that irretrievable moment
at eighty miles an hour
The car skidded at one turn,
slid into new grass off the street –
Clement yanked reverse, spun oversized tires,
splattered mud, soon back on the pavement,
painting treads under streetlights
He drove on at the top of his life,
whooshing under canopies of oak, maple, ash,
me with a girl so perfectly named Vickie
The raw, starchy smell of earth and growth
came at us out of the sweetness of summer,
kept coming and coming and coming