Old friend, are we there yet? You sat with me once, outside a dirty burger joint, a hard light at the windows. It was just about the ass crack of the afternoon, mountains in the distance, & I’d played a trick on you, or you’d played a trick on me, & the highway was a home to comings & goings, nothing to do with us. We had hours yet to drive. Old friend, how long should we sit here, breathing dust & gasoline, watching clouds gut themselves on the pines?
Copyright © 2018 Joe Wilkins. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Summer 2018.