Once, Driving West of Billings, Montana

By Susan Mitchell b. 1944 Susan Mitchell

I ran into the afterlife.

No fluffy white clouds. Not even stars. Only sky

dark as the inside of a movie theater

at three in the afternoon and getting bigger all the time,

expanding at terrific speed

over the car which was disappearing,

flattening out empty

as the fields on either side.

It was impossible to think

under that rain louder than engines.

I turned off the radio to listen, let my head

fill up until every bone

was vibrating—sky.

Twice, trees of lightning

broke out of the asphalt. I could smell

the highway burning. Long after, saw blue smoke twirling

behind the eyeballs, lariats

doing fancy rope tricks, jerking silver

dollars out of the air, along with billiard cues, ninepins.

I was starting to feel I could drive forever

when suddenly one of those trees was right in front of me.

Of course, I hit it—

branches shooting stars down the windshield,

poor car shaking like a dazed cow.

I thought this time for sure I was dead

so whatever was on the other side had to be eternity.

Saw sky enormous as nowhere. Kept on driving.

Source: The Water Inside The Water (Wesleyan University Press, 1983)

Biography

Susan Mitchell is the author of three collections of poetry, The Water Inside the Water (1983); Rapture (1992), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and a finalist for the National Book Award; and Erotikon (2000). Her poems have appeared in magazines and journals such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Fence, among others. The recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, Mitchell’s other awards include fellowships from the . . .

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