SSAT Practice Test 11

Plow, Before Dawn

¹It comes before the birds do, before the furnace

²clears its throat, before the first gray light

³has thought about the window: a low grinding

⁴that starts three streets away and leans closer,

⁵a sound like a giant dragging his chair.

⁶I lie still and follow it by ear —

⁷the scrape, the pause, the beeping as it backs

⁸out of the dead end by the creek,

⁹the orange light that wheels across my ceiling

¹⁰like a slow and doubtful lighthouse.

¹¹Somebody is awake in there.

¹²Somebody poured coffee in a dark kitchen,

¹³found the keys by feel, warmed the engine,

¹⁴and drove out into all that white

¹⁵so that by seven the rest of us can say

¹⁶the roads are fine, as if roads

¹⁷simply were, the way weather is,

¹⁸the way bread is, waiting in a store.

¹⁹My father says the town came by last night,

²⁰the town did a good job, as if the town

²¹had hands and a thermos and a back that aches.

²²It is the same with the lights, the mail,

²³the water climbing faithfully through the pipes:

²⁴we notice them only when they fail.

²⁵I have never seen the driver's face.

²⁶I picture gloves, a radio turned low

²⁷to a station playing songs from before

²⁸I was born, a sandwich on the dashboard.

²⁹I picture nothing, really —

³⁰only a shape behind the fogged glass,

³¹a shoulder leaning into the turn.

³²By the time I'm dressed, the sound is gone,

³³folded back into the hush it came from,

³⁴and the street lies open, black and steaming,

³⁵a long clean page

³⁶that someone has already written on.