Nights when the wet road glistens like a black mirror they are there, perched like stone-still statues

on the dark sheen of tar,

contemplating the sound a drop makes

when finally it strikes something solid.

Great washes of car light bearing down

on their unblinking meditations,

they are little buddhas, squatting transfixed,

and for miles the road is splattered,

little wet piles where they have gone down under tires,

knowing in one instant the sound their lives make

when something solid finally strikes.