When the tall and bearded careers advisor
set up his stall and his slide projector
something clicked. There on the silver screen,
like a photograph of the human soul,
the X-ray plate of the ten-year-old girl
who swallowed a toy. Shadows and shapes,
mercury-tinted lungs and a tin-foil heart,
alloy organs and tubes, but bottom left,
the caught-on-camera lightning strike
of the metal car: like a neon bone,
some classic roadster with an open top
and a man at the wheel in goggles and cap,
motoring on through deep, internal dark.
The clouds opened up; we were leaving the past,
drawn by a star that had risen inside us,
some as astronauts and some as taxi-drivers.