The guy in the tow truck, Randy or Louis,

I can’t remember which, backs up to my old Ford,

for years, my only way to escape town, drinking

on country roads, eating Chicken Annie’s wings,

driving all dirt and gravel towards my city lover.

There is a pleasure in tossing bones

out of the window for coyotes, the woods thick

with honeysuckle in bloom.

And now this, the truck, a midnight Ranger, dying

against the curb with Randy or Louis digging

through a box of fuses. He preferred

not to take a truck before its time. It is stupid

to mourn a Ford. No heaven to speak of

with spiders under the hood. Mud daubers.

Mice droppings on the manifold.

We shook hands before he hauled west on Santa Fe,

a season of leaves flying up from the bed.

Al Ortolani is the author of the collections Hansel and Gretel Get the Word on the Street (Rattle, 2019), On the Chicopee Spur (2018), Paper Birds Don’t Fly (2016), Waving Mustard in Surrender (2014), Cooking Chili on the Day of the Dead (2013), and Finding the Edge (2011). His poetry and reviews have appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Tar River Poetry, and the New York Quarterly.