Car Trouble
We sat by the road and watched the cars pass hurriedly by.
They left in their wake a dusty cloud of gravel
that threatened to either blow us away or bury us alive.
Maybe both.
We were thrown into a strange, protective pose,
and the passing cars must have thought us waiting for an earthquake
or preparing for a plane to crash
with our heads held down between our knees
and our tightened hands clasped over our necks.
I wondered if a child pointed at our bent backs,
recognizing the silly position,
or if, perhaps, a stewardess gazed with dread,
thinking us a premonition of her flight to come.
No matter.
We were in our own emergency without them.
And, unfortunate for us,
there were no teachers to call it all a drill
or flight crew staff to assure us the calamity was all imagined.
We were on our own, by the side of the road,
waiting for the truck to pull the car we tried to push in vain.
It never came, and I questioned if it ever would.
He ran to the call box, which stood down the road like a sentinel
closer to our destination than we thought weíd ever get.
Funny, how it became our goal.
At any other time weíd pass it by without a glance,
as did the train of cars we found ourselves increasingly detached from.
Nothing now separated us from the solitary figure.
Except space.
If only we could usurp its power and call our way to San Francisco.
But it wouldnít let us.
We knew, and didnít even try.
Instead we hoped to gain its trust,
and then it might just help us home.
It was this “thing” he ran to.
This mindless thing with all the power and none of the will.
I hoped our will was enough to move it out of indifference.
He ran to the box and disappeared — swallowed by the distance.
I blinked in disbelief, no longer shielding myself
from the gravel which flew relentlessly in my direction.
The sentinel stood there still —
frustratingly still as it never moved an inch.
I wondered what it was guarding.
Or protecting.
Obviously not me, not us.
He had run to the call box and now he was gone.
Had the sentinel slain him?
Was it all a mirage?
I didnít dare to move,
but kept my dusty eyes upon the figure that diminished
with the diminishing light.
We were split, the two of us, and now the sun was split as well —
shattered into fragments by the passing trucks
who each took shards for souvenirs
that ultimately speared my eyes as well.
Now the earth and sky were against me.
And I was alone.
Suddenly he ran to me,
with breaths that came faster even than his feet.
He sat beside me and related his encounter
with the figure now obscured by the deeds of shiny thieves
who rumbled by in silent fury —
they had imagined their share of the sun to be more.
We sat by the road and watched the cars pass hurriedly by.
And they left us in their wake
in a dusty cloud of gravel
that threatened to either blow us away or bury us alive.
Maybe both.