I met you at a gasoline station,
out in the splinter-and-dust nowhere.
You were beautiful. I wanted to take
you
with me, into that vapor-pearled back
seat, out of here.
You made me think of that overalls-girl
in my sculpture class, and that sweet
soccer player
with the hurt back, and that
cookie-skinned artist
with her eyes over-blacked...
And all the versions of beauty I had
never dared to
ask “please come,” just put onto a
list of views
I'd watched passing in the exhaust,
back where I'm from.
Beyond this,
I went to your list,
which I'm sure you carry, of every
pretty human you have ever regretted
ducking; every bright face that might
have been better than alone...
And out beyond that, a streaming,
indefinite expanse
of every face you or I might see
coming up ahead;
every heart-fluttering,
mutual glance.
There would be no way to fit them all
into this car, in this narrow time,
with you and me.
There is only time here to touch in
passing; to
absorb what we can and, beyond that,
let things be.
“I'll take twenty of diesel—I
forget which pump I'm at.”
she smiled (there were
only two).
“I bet that joke gets old, huh?”
“Only for the first month,”
she smiled again,
“then
it gets new.”
