Route 1 North, Philadelphia to Highland Park

Your father has given you the wheel.

The mostly-empty highway offers 

your 17-year-old eyes no distractions,

and the Firebird descending the on-ramp is red.

The left turn signal isn’t instinctive yet.

Nor is the glance that checks your blind spot

before the lane change. But as you settle

back into the forward focus of highway driving

your father’s hand covers your gearshift-perched

right, his mouth curling before opening, “Good job.”

He doesn’t remind you that sharing the road

with newcomers is less instinctual for you

than your blind-spot check. He is all praise, 

and when the therapist asks, ten years later,

what you miss — how you imagined him

feeling when you pictured handing over

the grandchild he will never know — you remember

that he never held praise too tightly, that he

knew confidence as a vested commodity,

its installation as vital as anything fathers give sons.