I’m not proud of it, but I couldn’t resist
\nSerena, the British woman on my GPS,
\nwho understood I had better things to do
\nwhile driving than to think about what
\nI was doing, and who had the most charming<\/p>\n
difficulty with her r’s. I went everywhere
\nwith her, making each turn she whispered
\nwith that lisp of hers into my ear as I watched
\nthe man she had made of me on my GPS TV,
\na superhero in a blue car taking on the tangle<\/p>\n
of roads that tumbled out of the horizon,
\nuntil Diane, my wife and former navigator,
\nwho couldn’t match Serena’s expertise,
\nnot to mention her modest compliance, began
\nto resent her. “She says ‘rump’ instead of of ‘ramp,'”<\/p>\n
Diane remarked as I made another perfect
\nexit off the thruway, “and that thing she does
\nwith her r’s is driving me nuts.” It was wonderful
\nto be the source of conflict between two
\nwomen, but then I began to consider how<\/p>\n
my destination time in the lower left corner
\nkept adjusting itself according to my speed,
\na small reminder that in the very moment
\nI was enjoying my triumph over the map,
\na computer somewhere that knew everything<\/p>\n
was mapping me. I recall a certain period
\nof melancholy before I returned to my wife,
\nSerena and I had been that good together,
\nI having made so many wrong turns
\nin my life, she only wanting to help me<\/p>\n
make them right. Yet I couldn’t stop longing for;
\nof all things, the fights Diane and I once had
\nabout the urgency of finding our way,
\nand the seductive thought of ending
\nbeside some forgotten field among cows<\/p>\n
on a dwindling road that didn’t even exist
\non the ragged copy of the known world
\nshe held in her lap. Which was, minus the cows,
\njust where we were one week after I unplugged
\nthe GPS, and we sat quietly at the roadside<\/p>\n
spent by our argument, she turning to me
\nwith her blue eyes and that old, dear expression
\nof helplessness, I falling in love all over again
\nbecause there was no Serena to recalculate,
\nonly the two of us together once more, getting lost.\n
Follow McNair’s thinking about this poem through his revisions of it. (Line changes are highlighted in yellow; revised line breaks are indicated by yellow verticals.)<\/span><\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\t