Winnemucca Truck Stop
Cross the two-lane out the truck stop,
walking past the cemetery awash with
pea gravel and the backdrop of mountains,
steep crinolines white with powdered snow.
Max’s dad is buried right here,
supposedly choked on a hotdog but
that’s never the whole story
or is it?
You and I, we eat Mexican
at the casino next door.
Then we leave, me driving
elbows propped on steering wheel,
eyes checking all six mirrors
making the slow merge diagonally,
to push up to speed. Hood ornament
aligns with the outside white line,
at the most one foot of space to spare
always in any situation, all directions.
Baby oh baby, shouts the radio,
I love you too much. Dogs curl
on the bunk, while your head’s
wedged between seat and window.
Passing the Union Pacific three engines,
yellow, red letters, black soot smudges,
hauling the thread of orange freight cars,
like tiny hand embroidered stitches
along these mountains’ basted hem.
But the high desert keeps moving up, back
then finally, just clean out of the way.
Wyoming Semi Trucks
Don’t even waste the spit for a wish:
You can’t drive slow in Wyoming.
Those black masked antelope under
the slow circle of burnished hawks,
distant view through your windshield,
flashes past the side windows and
vanish in the thrust of rust, rock butte,
emptied mirror’s twinkled reflections.
The very landscape sweeps up behind,
rocking and rolling your trailer down
while you peer ahead, catching up
to the next overloaded truck now just
a fleck on this interstate’s horizon.
Don’t get boxed in, shifting futilely,
down and down and down against
gravity’s hobble as a passenger car
on cruise control sets itself up by
your way-back-there bumper
as if you’re not driving
seven hundred and fifty miles
today, tomorrow and the next day.
Quick, move out to the left lane,
not boxed in by a guy who has
a whole week getting to Chicago.
Trust your CB whispering out cops
as you sweep past an apple hauler’s
Oregon to South East grocery run.
Headlights flash, cut you back in,
instant clear of his left front bumper
so the truck behind can sweep past
in sparkling chrome of a new wash
even as your RPMs are falling with
this slowly slowing mountain rise,
that shifts your gear button back.
