The Trucker

With a foot firmly planted on the only step, 

a hand with white-knuckle grasp on the handle bar, 

he hoists upward his tired body that aches for rest.

Tonight he will go unearthly far.

The wheels moving down a familiar trail,

yellow dashes and dots like morris code.

They tell him secrets, whisper, and wail. 

They speak the same language, he and the road.

At times he forgets how long hes been gone,

has it been a week? Two? Can't be more.

His daughter's volleyball game had came and went on.

He has missed them all, she expects that now, her feelings weren't torn.

He thinks of his wife with a newly bald head.

Will she have gotten worse by the time he returned?

Perhaps, he will hear one night that she is dead..

Numbness takes over, he clicks on his blinkers and makes the next turn.

She is his best friend and understands why he leaves.

There are bills, walls, water, technology, and heat,

hospitals, neighbors, and mouths to feed.

Down goes the gas pedal with the shift of his feet.

He is sixty-five.

His joints creak and rattle,

but his eyes are alive.

They show a warrior fighting an unending battle.

But that is all they will show,

for hope as  long left him. 

The world has zoomed passed him, this is all that he knows.

Rubber, oil and sixteen silver rims.

Maybe one day he'll make it big.

Find the cure to cancer.

Make time for his kid.

Right now there is only one answer...

He places a hand on the gear shift, a pattern he knows by heart.

He feels the sway of the load he has stacked behind.

The road like a sculptor, the trucker his art.

It holds him, molds him, over taking his mind.

And the trucker moves forward, 

his destination in mind,

The modern world has over whelmed him.

An unyielding bind.