Ode to a Truck

Wild Western
freedom
you don’t fuck with a girl and her truck
I was 19, slept in truck stops in the open long-bed of a Toyota
big rigs humming
knife under my pillow

when I’m taller
than anyone else on the road
I run the gamut, the gauntlet
all the signature
of a mesh-back and combat boots
what was a sweaty Stetson
truck as bedroll
under the open sky

glory be to wild places where the polite road
ends and things
get guttural
dirt embedded in the cracks
so thick you can’t wash it all off – like me with
the wild sewn into the
edges and roots of
every follicle of hair
my body a vortex of seed and cell
and dreams of limbs like those on trees

reaching for the unknown crags of
rock and
splashing water running
in rivulets around tires that track
surefooted like a beast