Cold Car

Early still dark and the cat is up
a cup of coffee before commute
past a golden sun in woods lost
to old Firestones rubber cairns.

Commutes are like short stories
back out, turn around, take off
reach the corner slow stop turn
right down the hill to the light.

The hills loom typographically
a bold outline of italicized firs
at an intersection of squirrels
and owls a tree older than any

house on the block remembers
not who lived where but winds
and howls rains and scorching
sun a few children on swings.

Houses last longer than cars
trees longer than houses the
old man recalls his home his
cars and the tree he planted

in his front yard a year prior
to the war and it lived to see
the freeway come through
odd name that, he said,

no one on it ever seemed free
especially if you missed your
offramp had to go another
mile or two get off back on.

One picks a car like a font
default curlicue bumpers
and chrome strips along
the doors inside the bowl

cold in the counter stroke
as one enters the aperture
the temperature there not
quite human in spite of the

comfort compared to the horse
drawn buggy or the old man
with a staff stumbling toward
town his rucksack full of acorns.