Words from Inside My Head

I was feeling disconnected from this woman
in the knitting group I had joined,
she was telling us how often she had

“knitted for hours in the car as she was driving”, 
most recently on a trip she’d made to 
Ann Arbor.  Now, knitting while you

are driving was not something I was familiar with; 
I felt lost in my mind ‘til in my thinking, I removed 
myself from the driver’s seat, 

took my hands off of the steering wheel and firmly 
grasped the needles.  My eyes left the road, 
my gaze shifting to the work spread 

across across my lap, I took a few moments to 
look outside the window at misty cloudlike steam 
rising from the mountains, the sun 

rolling up the hillside. Back inside, I counted rows 
already knitted, and knew exactly where I was. 
Twisting down the West Virginia highway, 

a double-towing trailer truck rumbling by on the left, 
it was not for me to worry as I picked up a dropped 
stitch or nodded off to sleep, 

sounds of the engine humming, no worries for me of
running off the road or running out of gas. In reality
for years I’ve been driving solo 

while listening to the station of my choice. Any time 
I’ve wanted to watch puffs of white clouds rising 
over dusty mountains surrounding 

me, I’ve had to pull over and stop the car.  I didn’t 
match this woman in my knitting group, who’d
claimed to be knitting for hours in the car 

while someone else was driving her on her road trip 
to wherever. There’s no knitting for hours while
driving in the car for me.