Exit Ramp

Published in Main Street Rag, 2009

 

For my teenage brother in a stolen Chevrolet,

the exit ramps ahead were all possibilities,

potential tangents boogying off into sunburned pastures

surging toward an edgy, darkening horizon.

 

He gave himself a free ride now

with the whoopee wind whistling his tune,

with country and western wailing his mood.

He lived the bounce now,

cutting himself free from the herd,

escaping a small-town’s feedlot existence,

flying forward as in a swing, away, away now,

the reaction delayed for some other time zone.

 

But these ramps were only half-choices: limited

to one-way leaving, to veering only right.  No lefts allowed.

He turned off toward Comanche and aborted

the promises of choices further up the concrete road.

But that was all right: his future had no play in it,

didn’t extend beyond the gas in the Chevy’s tank,

or his forced enlistment into the Marine Corps;

for him only the present tense carried weight.

 

The stop sign of his chosen exit

called for another decision: right or left?

Into the light of a cranberry-red sky and setting sun?

Or its opposite where night already threatened?

Which way, coyote?  Either choice left behind

a past not to be traveled, one that would

unfurl like a country road receding

in the Chevy’s rearview mirror.