Dream Date
Day paints her nails red before slipping on
first one black fishnet stocking, then the other.
She has a lot on her mind.
Desert wind teases her cloud hair;
sunlight is the slip beneath her hem,
her music the baying of wolves.
Taste of moon on her lips,
with morning dew she perfumes her wrist.
Her finish is so close, she can hear evening
on the treetops through her fingertips.
Now that she's ready, she decides
that King Chango's in Peach Springs, Arizona
is the place to go,
but she isn't ready, she’ll never
be ready.
The trucker, hauling trees,
can see that even from a distance
as he approaches her hitch-hiking the Ten in Walnut
—he's seen lot lizards
looking better put-together than her—
Now that dog don't hunt! he mutters
into the CB radio to no-one.
She looks like one of those days
that start out perfectly fine
but then grind to a halt when you floor it.
She's made up her face in the wrong mirror—
the classical mirror of introspection—
while in his mirror he sees nothing,
not even what is behind him on the road.
Up ahead of him, Day
has her thumb out as she practices
the rhumba along the center divider,
and the trucker reaches his arm out the window
scooping her up by the waist
at eighty miles an hour
with both hands still on the wheel.
What a vision she is as she tells him
all the marvels she's seen,
all the people she's been!
The Druid who had been dancing with her
just after dawn back on Le Presqu'île de Quiberon
showers mistletoe onto the late-model Volvo sleeper.
Poor dumb trucker, he muses,
will be dancing on the head of a pin
talking nonsense
with his arms around a beautiful cadaver
once the stars' heavy shadows finish her off.
And there we see him, his truck over the side,
trees and midnight scattered everywhere,
his tears wetting the match
as he laughs with the Druid over a cigarette,
wondering who she was and where she went.
C'est la guerre,
the CB radio reminds them in English
—except the radio is off—
the tractor is on its side in the woods,
and Day dimished
to a scarlet fingernail of moon low in the west.
Day paints her nails red before slipping on
first one black fishnet stocking, then the other.
She has a lot on her mind.
Desert wind teases her cloud hair;
sunlight is the slip beneath her hem,
her music the baying of wolves.
Taste of moon on her lips,
with morning dew she perfumes her wrist.
Her finish is so close, she can hear evening
on the treetops through her fingertips.
Now that she's ready, she decides
that King Chango's in Peach Springs, Arizona
is the place to go,
but she isn't ready, she’ll never
be ready.
The trucker, hauling trees,
can see that even from a distance
as he approaches her hitch-hiking the Ten in Walnut
—he's seen lot lizards
looking better put-together than her—
Now that dog don't hunt! he mutters
into the CB radio to no-one.
She looks like one of those days
that start out perfectly fine
but then grind to a halt when you floor it.
She's made up her face in the wrong mirror—
the classical mirror of introspection—
while in his mirror he sees nothing,
not even what is behind him on the road.
Up ahead of him, Day
has her thumb out as she practices
the rhumba along the center divider,
and the trucker reaches his arm out the window
scooping her up by the waist
at eighty miles an hour
with both hands still on the wheel.
What a vision she is as she tells him
all the marvels she's seen,
all the people she's been!
The Druid who had been dancing with her
just after dawn back on Le Presqu'île de Quiberon
showers mistletoe onto the late-model Volvo sleeper.
Poor dumb trucker, he muses,
will be dancing on the head of a pin
talking nonsense
with his arms around a beautiful cadaver
once the stars' heavy shadows finish her off.
And there we see him, his truck over the side,
trees and midnight scattered everywhere,
his tears wetting the match
as he laughs with the Druid over a cigarette,
wondering who she was and where she went.
C'est la guerre,
the CB radio reminds them in English
—except the radio is off—
the tractor is on its side in the woods,
and Day dimished
to a scarlet fingernail of moon low in the west.