Sunday, January 24, 2021

Truck Driver's Aubade

 Listen: sunrise stirs bugs

in dry grass. The long

whine of a steel guitar

curves into a thin blue highway.


This peace is easy to take, I'll tell you.

We kiss, kick off covers

light as dead butterflies,

and grab each other, laughing.


Your radio drops out a three-chord,

two-minute-fifty song,

too much like other songs,

just like those tin napkin


and sugar dispensers

that look alike always alike

on sticky plastic countertops 

at all them truck strops, 


where I’ll rest elbows,

the thick roar of sixteen

tires still in my ears. Darling,

if I chat up a waitress 


while she's filling my 

Thermos with coffee,

know it's only out of

habit and good manners. 


You know my heart growls

like a diesel for you when

dawn spills across the hood

of the Peterbilt, and I think


ahead to gearing down on

the grade sloping into

your place here where 

the creek sings out back. 


circa 1987/2021

No comments: