Parking ½ Mile Ahead

Pic: my own (taken at Box Hill, Surrey)

The noon sun
projected safety logos
in green tint onto his forehead,
as the juggernaut in front merged
with its dark shadow.

For seven years he’d humped
a suitcase of carbonated water
from door to door,
lunched in trash-littered crescents
munching greasy drum sticks and lettuce
as traffic, five lanes wide,
whooshed past his right eye.

Wife gone, son on methadone,
daughter chewing khat in a lilac house,
with the engine quietly idling,
he found peace in a
toxic bubble.
 
 
 
 
Goth::2005