Hurtling down the Stampede Trail
like Alexander Super Tramp
Into the Wild she bucks like a teen
with a laminate-warm license.

Engine cranking, springs crunching,
over The Toppler she teeters
like a sloop close-hauled in a gale
alert for lynx round every bend.

Tires slipping, chassis tipping,
through door-skimming wallows she plows
into turns as she learned long ago.
Steer into the skid and don’t brake!

She’s fearless. In forty years at the wheel
navigating all the Big Ds—
Destitution, Divorce, Depression, Downsizing,
she steered into the skid, never braking.

How could she have known at age sixteen
Drivers’ Ed would prepare her for life?

This poem first appeared in the Learning to Drive Poetry & Prose Series (Silver Birch Press, 2016).
Used here with the author’s permission.