Sunrise Service

by Richard Hartwell

From a northwest land of
lowboys, flatbeds and pickups,
unprepared for the infectious
spread of suburbanization,
he’s off the freeway and
staring down endless avenues
at 3 a.m. when all the lights
turn yellow simultaneously
as far as eyes can see, while
only searching for stability;

Swept from a Tennessee coal
mountains’ birth and adolescence,
discarded in the far west with
a saturation of children and a
life darkened like the underside
of leaves forever turned
from the sun, speckled with
rust and housing spider-spawn,
she seeks reprieve in the pre-
dawn from an ugly plastic life;

Colliding at the edge of day,
two souls coil around a
mutuality of sadness under
the soft dome light of the
overhead cab of a parked
semi sitting in the driveway;
lonely man, single mom,
a coupled moment, a rending
of sunset, assumed, as sunrise
blazes their night’s ending.