Doug Thiele
Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 120 in October, 2009.
The sedan of life roars by
As you stand by the Big Highway
At first it was a spot on the far horizon
Rippling in the heat of this mid-day desert
one black atom among the saguaros and creosote and sand
shimmering dancing in the refracted haze of the beginning of your life
possessed only of desert allusion, its sound as yet irrelevant in the thin air
now, still close to irrelevance, the sedan of life takes shape, glint of chrome
mirror of windshield, the joy of mechanical movement threatening and
promising as the sedan of life recognizes you, its pistons howling as your
life screams past and you step back
irrelevant and spent
dust choked
