Sneak Preview of Spring

Driving Down Toward Florida

Fleeing a world that is cold,
because up North it is snowing on our
self-absorbed lovers who abandoned us
never realizing we would flee their wintry tongues.
Foregoing final acts of desperation
as we pass oasis after oasis.
Marking the outskirts of a civilization
full of highway bandits -
food machines and fuel fillups
where extortionate prices
are mixed with leering smiles.
And cheese sandwiches
are only white or yellow,
glistening moist and ominous.
In obscenely bright neon lights
glaring from service center islands
as if from a dentist's office,
eerily provoking pain from sharp steel probes.
Causing you to imagine whirring drills
with no sufficient anesthetic.
On the road passing little dwellings,
shacks really, made of rusted corrugated tin,
dented, pock-marked, where ghosts are seen
between breaths of intermittent rain.
In mile after torturous mile
of blackened rubber strips
from exploded truck tires -
which look like discarded alligators.
Flushed-out, abandoned presents
left to bake and sizzle without love
existing in the cooling snow of our yesterdays.
Dried-up carcasses cast
alongside swaying clumps of palm trees.
In whose leafy shadows hide strange lizards,
who it is said breathe from their eyes.
And we know we are getting closer,
far from frozen hearts.
We wish we could stop.