In the Same Coin

I want to be vibrant—

multicolored and excited, dancing

in my leather and feather and wild

feel alive, ferocious

heart pounding, hands

beating an African drum. 

I looked into their eyes and remembered

What color was; is. 

Heard the drum, the pounding of hundreds of

Rhythmic feet against the dirt

Feather and wild in her hair, in her walk

Ferocious. 

“I’ve made new friends,” I told him, all excitement. 

“How do you know they were friends?” he asked. 

Gave some answer; later, realized.  He was out of context.  Or I was. 

Friendships are small economies. 

Wet lands, dark soil, cold winter.

Pale people come, they stay.  No reason to leave. 

Grandfathers baled hay together, 

favor piled on favor,

like the paint on the old oak barn. 

Everyone knows everyone;

same schools, family names, small towns. 

Friendships, like barter. 

I’d thought that I was the one

who’d lost my color, no friends,

trying to buy friendship with foreign coin.

Where are you from?  What High School did you go to? 

My answers are all wrong. 

There are dry lands to the West. 

White soil covers rock; no reason to stay. 

Travelers, truckers; wanderers. 

Airstream trailers, RV’s in the desert. 

Semis are sailing ships,

Carrying goods across the ocean of the Great Plains,

long, lonely miles. 

Lonely.  Restless. 

Friendship; small investments

Variable interest rate, easy credit

High yield.  Dividends, bonds;

Day traders. 

Nebraska, truck stop, empty; 11 a.m. 

Broken, lonely eyes; roll-over stomach

sitting in a cab all day, blotted with sweat. 

Waiting for his shower number. 

“Mind if I sit with you?”  I put down my tray. 

Pretty girl, he with a roll-over stomach. 

Life’s story in forty minutes:

Driving out of Los Angeles, cross the Mississippi,

south to Georgia. 

Wife in New Jersey.  Three kids. 

Sex with men on the road;

other truckers.  “Lot lizards.”  Homeless boys. 

“Not as uncommon as you think,” I told him. 

He bought me coffee.  Minimal good-bye’s. 

We drove on. 

Floods in Cedar Rapids, I-80, underwater. 

Two hour wait: I leaned against a truck-cab,

talking to a stranger. 

He could have been another Dahmer, I wouldn’t know. 

Road college.  The professor explains lesbians. 

Road college.  The professor explains flood-insurance. 

His family waits for him, evacuated;

2300 miles ’til home.

I walk ferocious. 

Sniff out sex-offenders, eat them alive:

Whither men’s testicles back inside their bodies

With my ferocious Glare. 

GRONK! 

Pretty girl bites hard. 

 

Open-road favors paid forward.  Road justice.  

Windshield-wiper flown off into the dark;

Four hours driving blind;

Black couple driving back to Christian college

Gave me and my gas-can a lift. 

Two years later, my turn.

A man in a gray run-down Honda, twin boys,

I left him with a spare gas-can

and the stuffed bear from my back window.

Road-rage is senseless, leap-frogging across a continent. 

Slick silver sports-car zips around

a bright yellow Peterbilt,

hauling two trailers full of swine. 

Middle finger; face buried in a cell-phone. 

Six hours later, he stands by his steaming high-status engine. 

No one stops to help.  Road justice. 

           

Four dogs, two hitchhikers sleeping in a tent

on a Nebraska interchange;

winds of fifty miles an hour, biting cold. 

Dogs in the back of my U-Haul, humans up front,

out of the wind, grateful company for 800 miles. 

Headed for Florida, homeless alcoholism—

No frostbite. 

The trucker who bought me coffee in Nebraska

waved good-bye on the east side of the Mississippi River. 

Wife waiting in New Jersey. 

His youngest son was two. 

He feared he might have AIDS. 

I turned north, headed home. 

            “I’ve made new friends,” I told him, all excitement. 

“How do you know they were friends?” he asked. 

I don’t have to trust everyone else; just myself. 

I recognized them instantly.  Friendship economy. 

We use the same coin. 

Kathlean Wolf

5 March 2013