Craving the Uncanny

Imagining what my limited senses
fail to reveal, I pore over witness accounts
of unexplained phenomena:

people locked safe in their cars,
who spot a bizarre object above the highway
at night — close encounter of the first kind,
close enough for eeriness to permeate the air
like the smell of hot metal.

Some brave souls flash their headlights,
sending out a high-beam hello
and receive an identical flash in reply.

Reading this, I feel envy’s pinch
and wonder if I would attempt contact,
not with a deity but an entity so unbound
by the laws of physics that it might as well be.

And how changed would it leave me,
to be graced by that flicker of lights,
that nod of recognition?