Michael Snider

Love’s Drive 

Driving to work and driving home forever  

While nothing ever changes but the lights 

And my illusions and the price of gas, 

And every day I choose again to drive 

To work, to work, to drive back home — enough 

To drive a man to drink, I tell myself. 

I have a list of things I tell myself. 

I tell myself that nothing lasts forever, 

That there will come a day I've had enough 

Of everything and I'll turn out the lights 

And lock the doors and take the car and drive 

Until I find myself or else run out of gas ... 

Thing is, it's likely I'll run out of gas. 

I’d have to have a self to find myself, 

And since I’ve given it away, that drive 

Would take me just so far, and then forever 

I’d be lost from you, without your lights 

To guide me — ah, there’s more than just enough 

Right here and now, alone with you — enough 

To get us through. As long as there is gas, 

And you and I, my love, can see our lights 

Shone for each other, I can tell myself 

It doesn’t matter we don’t have forever 

As long as we know where we need to drive 

To find each other when we need to drive, 

When the common world is not enough — 

It never will be since it’s not forever — 

And there will come a time there is no gas,  

And I can never know when I myself 

Will fail, and someone else will kill the lights. 

Whoever’s there, if anyone, to kill the lights, 

I hope they know enough to know the drive 

Of love that drives us all, that I myself 

Have only touched, but I have touched enough  

To know it doesn’t matter if there’s gas, 

And love’s the only thing can touch forever.  

Your love helps me to trust myself enough 

To drive, no matter what the price of gas, 

Where our love’s light may shine, if not forever.

Stars

It wasn't half a billion years until

The first-born stars had died to make the stuff

We're made of—even then a slide downhill

From symmetry to chaos sure enough.

For everything is broken, even stars,

Even the cores of atoms, even space

Is broken, and nothing can unmake the scars

Of time which finally unmake every place.

Like you, the stars tonight are beautiful

And dying—what could ever matter more?

No simpler way could be as magical,

For we are still those stars that went before,

And while the Hubble circles in the night

We see their light, almost as old as light.

© Michael Snider

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