A red and black battery-powered scooter
or wheelchair, or whatever they’re called,
has carried this woman out to the edge
of her town, where the cracked pavement
comes to an end, and the last few feet
slip under the edge of the loose gravel,
the road going on, with a pickup that only
a moment ago swung out and around her,
now just dust in the distance. Khaki
hooded jacket, plaid scarf, water bottle.
Near her, the broken-off end of a curb,
foxtail and bindweed, a few glinting
pull-tabs, and a black rubber bungee strap
snapped free from something. She will be
sitting there, looking, long after you and I
would have lost patience, nothing ahead
but sky and miles bordered by fields,
although now, out of that yellow dust
on the horizon, there’s the flash from
a windshield, someone coming her way.