Route 10

Flat tire and no spare, fried and alone  
in the terra cotta Arizona landscape,  
with the buzzards and cacti. The sun  
messes with my head.  A battered  
 
pickup truck nears out of the floating  
highway haze.  How many bad horror  
movies have started this way?  I think,  
as a cowboy boot emerges, then another.  
 
There is a shadowed face under a hat.  His steps  
echo off pavement; crooked desert in a silver belt  
buckle, spinning sky, tight fist of my heart--and then  
a rich drawl washes over me.  A scroungy mutt bobs  
 
in the front seat, full of friendly goofiness, and my muscles  
relax.  Rattling down the road to the gas station, the dog  
kisses me, over and over, as the man smiles--as if  
he's done this before, as if this were a good, safe world.  
 
 
 
*Note: This poem also appears in Gutter Eloquence:  
http://www.guttereloquence.com/issue13/tivey13b.html