And another thing I hate about you
is you always want to take this old road.

It’s bumpy and those long limbs reach over it so
you can hardly see the sky. At night

they cover up the moon
so it looks bent, flaked and scratched

like a negative picture of an LP.
God, when’s the last time I saw an LP?

It was Little Anthony and the Imperials.
Is there any beer in the trunk?



And did you turn the light on in the hall?
And who knows how many alligators

are out there and we could blow a tire.
We’re not so young anymore you know.

When we were, we could stop out here
and have a great time, you with a bottle

in one hand and my breast in the other
stopped all night and hard-breathing our lives away

all wet in the heavy night heat and the frogs moaning in our ears.
And did you turn the light on in the hall?

You never know who’s going to be out there
with escaped convicts running all over this county.

Do you remember the egrets just before sundown
that one night, the sky was thick with those white birds,

and after they’d left        it was dark
and we just looked out at the water and at each other.

You told me that story about
it being time to leave home

and you had bus tickets to go up north.
And I lost the baby after that.


God, let’s never take this road again.