Driving the Trees

I'm just a driver
sauntering a winding B-Road
the starlit side of dusk.

Occasional rows of tall winter trees
escort this white lit route,
with branches as pikes presented high

as though they were an honour guard
and I were king.
But worry haunts,

strangeness waries;
were I that leader,
I'd smell assassination.

I'm nervous,
ready for flight,
a gazelle sensing a lion's eyes.

Yet there is no movement on this empty lane,
no life in the unhedged fields,
no wind in the winter trees.

And now I realise what I've seen;
my dashboard is being flashed white
by a light above my car

from what I cannot see,
yet the fields, the road,
the trees, all are still.

I feel the shock
of standing at a cliff edge
and the ground starts to give.

I lean forward,
look up through the windscreen,
fearing what silent power

could flash my car so bright.
I'm driving a row of trees
across the full moon.

What a fool.