Getting There

Getting There

All this weaving and wagging 

like a wound-up metallic

tail or a trailer bounced off

its ball, your bald head 

wrinkled against the glass 

for a passing glimpse 

of that great Ahead you hunger 

for, that planet just past the havoc

of heat shimmer where 

the burning in your lead foot 

will be quenched at last 

and all the beers sip cold 

to the bottom of the can, 

that nearly-perfect picture

with a hole the shape

of your Dodge Ram

into which you vanish

somewhere beyond the black cloud  

we linger in. I saw you

just one other time, about five minutes

later when we sat dead-

still, side by side at the red light 

on Battlefield, the unchanging one 

that doesn’t seem to belong 

but never asks what we think.

We idled next to one another

an eternity while over the shadow 

of a pine-perched crow light broke

both of our windshields.