The Ride/Fantasies

An opened beer between his legs, he slides
his calloused fingers from her thigh to shift
the gears, to take the beach before the sun
goes down and street lights grid the harbor.  Tires
go wild in sand, careening in the dunes.
Compelled by a male urge, he speeds, he has
to drive as far as he can drive, until
the wheels spin sand, began to sink . . .
                                                            They're stuck.

No chains, no flashlights, no one else in sight.
“What can I do?”
                           He doesn't want her help.
She wonders, as he digs sand with his hands,
if she is pregnant.  Watching day by day
for firm and useless breasts to swell with milk,
her girl-at-thirty body stretch and fill,
or for inevitable pain and blood.
She has not told him.  (Could they make new life?)
The clouds are turning darker, moving in.

She tries to cheer him on with jokes and beer.
If we were fictional, she says, we'd find
a house with lights, and hosts to take us in
and fix us omelets fresh from hen-house eggs,
play dulcimer or violin beside
a snapping fire and send us off to bed
with homemade quilts.  At night, a heavy rain
would pack the sand so we could drive away.
He answers, “You could try to find some boards.”

A year with him, a year of midnight calls:
her bed, his car, her bed, his car, her bed,
Scheherazade on the tape cassette,
each night no promise of another night.
No explanations for his absences.
He came from a long line of silent men.

One time he brought her garden peonies,
white petals overblown and edged with brown.
And she, who only trusted words, denied
the hints of more between them than sheer lust,
but made up detailed fantasies about
ten years from now when they would meet again:
a courtroom trial with blondes surrounding him,
a party where she meets his pregnant wife.

Walking in the sand, she is content
to listen to the wind move through the sage.
She thinks how simple it would be to walk
forever.  Small and distant, he appears
a shadow in the shadows of the dunes
beside the ghost of his white car, almost
invisible.  He won't look back--she knows.

But when he's gone, she conjures up the scent
and softness of his rose-and-gray plaid shirt,
small eyebrow scar, slight gap between his teeth.
His imprint is so strong that after years
of silence, she might still revive his kiss,
grow flushed and fragile from the memory,
like petals of a peony about
to shatter . . .
                      Empty-handed, she goes back.
He shoves, she steers; they free the car at last.

Published in Aileron