oldy but goody

Stop the Car

I'm on route 20
and it's dark with a smattering of headlights,
dots shining on the radar screen.
The cold steering wheel hurts my hands,
And it's 28 degrees, the radio man says.

In Baghdad, it's 28 degrees--
Celsius not Fahrenheit.
A despot is condemned to death,
another raindrop in the monsoon.

My eyes wander off the road
and in the midnight sky a flash
and a trail of a falling star, but is it
Space trash or meteorite?
These things don't matter much,
I still make a wish.

28 degrees?
It's cold or it's beautiful--
Saddam is dead?
Sunnis break their curfew to vow revenge,
Shiah break their curfew to shoot their guns
in elated joy.  Both sides will explode themselves
the very next day.

I stop the car,
and call you, my love, just to listen
to something besides the radio voice drone,
because it's cold and I'm lonely
whether I saw space trash or a star.