Nina Bannett

Featured in Silver Birch Press

No-man’s land,
a road show,
hybrid terrain,
traipsing through
our same start,
our same teacher.
I drove you
the wrong way,
one-way recognition,
unfamiliar street pattern.
You laughed like a crowd,
the wheel responded.
I finish my training first.
I am ahead of you.
Not simultaneous.
Not conjoined. Unfamiliar pattern.
Invincible. Licensed.
Logic with a lion’s bite we both foreswear.
Fuel for fury like circus music.

In “We Learn To Drive Together” I was thinking about the exhilaration, wonder, and fear that new drivers bring with them to the road. I took driving lessons in my late teens, at the same time as a close friend, and I received my license before she did. One night shortly after that, we were in the car together, and I found myself driving the wrong way down a one-way street in a neighborhood I knew nothing about. Terror quickly turned to laughter: we had spread our wings but weren’t sure what that meant, or how it would change our friendship.