Mark Haddon

1962 / Northampton, United Kingdom

The River-Car

The way it's parked, nose-down between the wet rocks
in the leaf-light of the gorge, water pouring
through the windscreen and the tyres blown;
as if the naiads put their fairy horses
out to grass and cruised the night in silver Escorts.

Or as if three boys from Hebden Bridge
grew bored and stole a car and drove it halfway
to the moors, grew bored again, then rolled it
from the muddy track and watched it hammer
through the trees until it came to rest

a hundred yards below. And as the echo
died away, the car they drove in dreams
kept floating downstream and the boys they'd never be
rode every bend of starlit water to the ocean.
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