Trucker

Another old one

He must have been
a thundering
highway-truck of a man;

he filled the screen
like he’d filled his cab,
but talked much smaller now;

his photogenic sorrow
drew cameras off his wife,
staring moistly from the sofa’s brink.

He looked crushed, run down,
for he had not swerved
to avoid himself.

One imagined the family business
rusting, abandoned,
in the back-yard of his mind.

Heaving heavy-haulage man,
he must have begged
to fade with the brakes,

to be ground to dust
in the brake-drum
he let his son blow clean.

(From the days when brake linings contained asbestos)