Note: This poem is a reconstruction. The original version appeared briefly on my first blog, Classical Sympathies, sometime around 2010, and like many things from that early site it was eventually lost in the digital shuffle. What remains here is an attempt to recreate the spirit of the piece from memory.
The poem itself is a mash-up of two real taxi rides that somehow fused together in recollection. One took place in Adelaide, Australia, during a ride from a hotel to the airport where the driver became thoroughly disoriented and began looping through unfamiliar streets. The other occurred years later in Kyoto, somewhere north of Sanjo, when a similarly confused driver managed to transform a short ride into a wandering tour of the nighttime grid.
Over time the two rides merged in memory into a single universal experience: the moment when a passenger realizes that the person holding the wheel may no longer fully know where he is going.
The result is presented here, perhaps a little mythologized, as a small recovered relic from the early days of the archive — a lost classic of the wandering taxi ride.
The haunted sweating taxi driver
took another right,
the meter ticking bravely
in the middle of the night.
The city slid past sideways
in a crooked grid of light,
and every turn he promised
somehow made the journey slight.
The haunted sweating taxi driver
muttered to the wheel,
as if the streets were hiding
some essential missing deal.
A restaurant we’d passed before
returned into my sight,
which meant the haunted driver
had again chosen wrong from right.
The haunted sweating taxi driver
took another right,
and wiped his brow dramatically
beneath the yellow light.
Now when your taxi driver loses the plot
this could go on all night,
because the man who holds the wheel
is captain of your flight.
You sit behind his kingdom
like a mildly troubled guest,
while every wrong decision
slowly multiplies the rest.
The haunted sweating taxi driver
leans forward in his seat,
as though the road might whisper
some confession through the street.
The meter ticks its steady hymn
to time and mortal plight,
while hostage to the haunted man
who’s searching for the right.
The haunted sweating taxi driver
takes yet another right,
and somewhere in the city
dawn prepares its quiet light.
But we remain in orbit
of his navigational blight—
for when your taxi driver loses the plot
this could go on all night.
Note: If you like this poem, you may also like the poems linked below. Happy reading!