driving instructions

when it’s gray morning
and you’re late for a meeting
When it’s another day of discovering
moment after moment you are
holding
your
breath—subconscious deal
you and your body made—
that you get to breathe when
the next task is done, or
the one after that.

Time to turn the car radio not
to news not to tinny holiday cheer but to the
Irishman’s poetry podcast.
Slowly
You see some of the things you hurry past—
That white goat, nosing the frosted grass,
Cows, just as the poet says placid
in that lovely brogue
Off to your left,
with no road leading to it,
weathered, once-red barn