Roadies
They are only on the road a minute or two
when an officer motions to pull over.
Fortunately he speaks Mediterranean
and lets them go with just a warning after
he asks for autographs. Lord learned
to drive from the same driver’s ed teacher
slash wrestling coach as John but can’t
parallel park to save himself. Nor can
he pin a body to a mat. Having a big, quick
cousin with natural abilities is godsent.
An accident up ahead. Driver of a semi
hit a tree; his body landed in a creek;
his haul of sheep for slaughter escaped.
Witnesses rubs their eyes when
the trucker gets up and walks, then hops
into the Lord’s and John’s back seat.
Out on the pike they stop for gas
and the trucker whose name is Pete or Paul
or something with a P springs for pie
and coffee times three. Ending a shift,
their waitress Mary asks for a lift.
Down the road she starts to sing about
a hammer, then Pete or Paul goes on and on
about a dragon, then wind. And this
is only the beginning.
Charles Springer lives in Pennsylvania and writes anywhere. A painter turned poet turned advertiser, he thinks he’d like to move to Oregon. His poems have appeared in Apalachee Review, Bay Windows, The Cincinnati Review, Cold Mountain Review, Creosote, Great Stream Review, Heliotrope, and Licking River Review, among others. Proudly, this marks his first appearance in Boxcar Poetry Review. (chasprgr@uplink.net)