It happens, when your truck
strands you along some
dirt track. Even after
it quits, as it rolls to a stop
you sway fore and aft
as if to use the lever
of your body to force
the truck another foot. But what’s
another foot among the yellowed
foothills of dried grass punctuated
with poles and pump-jacks?
You walk out the way you came.
You walk through a hot breeze
that carries the raven’s caw
and the hawks shriek as they
fight under the thin clouds.
You hope for a ride as much
you need a drink of water – a passing
roughneck or a cowboy or someone
who can get you all the way home.
The place you’d been driving away from
before everything broke down.
