Halfway between Chicago and the
coast,
somewhere west of Laramie,
I splayed an animal beneath the
wheels
at eighty miles per hour early on
a starless August night.
There was the thunk of it,
the splat—
and still the highway unwound
through the blackened west.
The gospelers from radio Del Rio
scarcely paused
in paving their high way to the
heavens,
the odometer clicked away the
hours and miles…
A rabbit? Coyote? Abandoned cat?
Impossible to tell. I cursed
silently, needlessly…
and stopped, an hour later, in
Green River—
hard by the steamy railroad
yards:
$10 for a room, communal john
just down the hall;
found a dive around the corner,
nursed a drink or two,
struck up a conversation, like a
spurting match,
with a woman slipping down the
dark side of adolescent dreams;
returned to my room where,
in the neon-washed gloom, she
bared
her baby’s body and took me,
kneeling, twixt her thighs,
and the iron bedstead rattled
blankly
toward the close. The silence was
complete.
Rewarded, she quickly took her
leave…
I stood at the window, smoked a
cigarette,
watched the tufts of smoke and
steam
rise like incense from the yards,
felt the shudder of the engines
through the wafer-thin walls,
felt drained, empty, rootless;
and that sonorous music of the wheels
stayed fast in my reckless mind
throughout the gravid night.
But…oh…that animal became a
bobcat
in my dreams, and with unleavened
joy I watched
the sunrise peel the walls clean
and burn the curtains through.
Utah was next…
