The West Side Highway morphs to verdant lawn,
with brown-gold patches (horse manure? a barn?),
lush green track down which we are careering
faster and faster, and no one is steering
or even driving: no hands on the wheel.
I scream. It comes out tinny and unreal.
No anger. Unaccountably, no fear.
Laughter. Leaping barricades, the car
plunges into the Hudson, down down down
through strange clear water. Does this mean we drown?
How frail it is, the guard rail in between
day and night, the waking and the dream,
the vertical where our waking hours are spent,
the horizontal that tells us what they meant.