The ailing Ford pulled down
To its naked comforts:
Plaid seat
On bucked porchboards, hulk nosed
Uphill, gazebo
For a touch-and-go posse
Of crows.
And the “in-gine” wallowing
Sow-heavy
Near the dung midden,
Pistons dull
As these elbows
Holding up a young girl’s chin,
Bare-bellied there
In elm shade,
Bad novel hot off
The bookmobile
Before her,
So engrossed
She won’t notice
The dark coming on, and what’s evening
Anyway when
You’re a mudhen thick
In a saccharine plot,
Book lit by the
Red glow
Of a turkey’s wattle
On the hill,
The pages turning themselves
In the breeze
Of how she sees herself
Now in the D.A.’s arms,
The Ford spit-polished and idling
At the gate,
Every worn-bait can
In the country
Tied with pink ribbon to the back bumper.
Thomas Johnson has a chapbook, _Footholds _(Ironwood Press), and a full-length book, _Homing Signals _(Stone-Marrow Press). (1975)