Farraday's Son
By Bill Gillard

Out the door of Morristown General
the sun squints in the west,
Farraday revs his two-seater
glides out onto New Jersey blacktop.

Route 57 ribbons north through
Morris Plains and Parsippany where
traffic swells
like pregnancy
but the late afternoon highway's curves are
straightened at Mount Tabor by the
Boonton Line's tracks.

Then 57 dies a little bit, contracted under
ten lanes of Route 80, like the Interstate
had an child in its belly and
miscarried. 57
fades, wounded
by long light at 46,
collapses and dies
a blinking red light at the T.

Down the hill is a low long row of apartments
where Farraday's empty sack
perches on a muddy embankment
above the Rockaway River
like a vulture in a leafless tree.

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