one gallon,
31 miles or so the EPA
guesstimated--163,680 feet
54,560 steps if he walked

he avoided
the major "arteries"
damnable euphemisms
for interstates

for what lifeblood
did they carry and what
did one see at 110 feet a second
1.25 miles a minute

at mile 3,
he spotted a cur crossing
the asphalt, or perhaps it was a coyote;
and until mile 12 he wondered

why he wanted to know where it had
come from, rather than where it was going,
because aren't road trips about getting
somewhere?

at mile 15, he saw a farmhouse
abandoned before time--or maybe when
a feeble old man died on a sagging bed
the month after he put his wife
in the cold ground

and told his progeny if their homestead
was good enough to bring them into the world,
and for her to depart, it was fine enough
for him to do the same

at mile 21, he traversed a bridge
over Red Bluff Creek, and he knew
there wasn't a bluff within a hundred miles;
perhaps it was got its colored calling, after
a poker player named Red, known
for his bluffing

at mile 30, he had a blowout;
no, he didn't careen off the old road
into a ditch, but slowly rolled to an impotent stop
atop the only hill in 50 miles

a man in overalls with an ancient pick up
stopped and offered aid in a drawl thick enough
to slow time; together they put on the donut
from the trunk--the man wouldn't take a ten
but said take care

and our traveler decided his helper
had to have been kin to the old man
in the abandoned shack, and perhaps he had
been there in the end, watching the wheel spin
on a tick tock clock, noting the precise minute
the old man passed--to write this time
in a family bible

because that is how it should be
of all those things he would see--beasts going
nowhere, mythic rivers from everywhere, and behind
ghost painted walls, men dying, men whose  
sons would stop to render aid to strangers
and help conjure the imagined tales
infinitely available of a gallon
of fossil fuel

in Morpheus' gray grip
I find no porcelain bowl  
and have to deposit my golden stream
into a bucket I often miss 

strangers happen upon me
while I'm in the act; their faces reveal mild rebuke
not for my ****** public display,
but for my poor aim

in the long lingering shadows of last light
the trees do not complain or put up a fight
to keep their dark companions at bay
or cling clumsily to the waning day
the grass will neither wither nor whine
nor ask the hidden orb to continue to shine
but for creatures who wander through incandescent haze
and speak boldly of the passage of days
the long shadows are measured with fear
for a certain number of them make a “year”
and unlike the eternal sea from whence we came
or grass and myriad other things we could name
we hide among shadows when they grow
and beg their source to once again glow

in his warm white tile grotto
he portions out a silky pool of it in his palm
lathers his graying mane

he watches the bottle’s volume sink
each day, makes a note on his Walmart scroll
reverently etched under “get milk”  

meticulous man, making lists;
he has never had an empty bottle
though once in a weary while,
he pauses to estimate
how many bottles
he will yet use  

this calculation he completes
on warm wet fingers while the water  
hums and steams the air  
and streams through
his thinning hair

all that life
in all that light

flesh walking, talking
electric

sparkling jewels
in a black sea

though to me
I gaze and wonder...

who is writing writhing verse?
who is making mad love?

and which bulb
will be the next to burn out?

for all bulbs die
and so will I

but NOT tonight
beguiled by all this light

I will stand
on this lofty ledge

and wonder who
the next walker will be,

to become a soul soundless,
in that eternal black sea

I murdered you, simply because
of the red fiddle on your back
and because I could, though
we stood under the same blistering sun

had you not made such a tangled web
I would have not known you were there

perhaps then, your sin was the same as mine
weaving words like webs, leaving them there
for all to see, and discover the spindling me
before they decide my fate, like I did yours
with the heel of my shoe