carrying

on trips like this i don't check the cargo.
follow other trucker's headlights like hard candy.
feel the road under my tongue. push onward.
statelines like jump rope. when i was a baby 
my mom carried me like this. we slept 
in park pavillions & grandmother's garage
& then in the backseat of the station wagon
with night rapping on windows. i loved it. 
craved the smell of gas station hot dogs
& stream of air from from the highway's urgency.
sometimes i dream the back is full of something truely valuable.
maybe secret museum artifacts only i have been trusted with.
of course, i know what it is. i keep a sheet on a clipboard 
in the front seat that details every mundane bundle.
when i arrive, i will checkto ensure all arrived safely.
i can count on one hand the number of times
i've kissed someone. the last, a skinny guy in nebraska,
asked if i was delivering dinosaur bones
to a museum. we opened up the back together.
i imagined seeing a full t-rex skeleton. 
something--anything to marvel at. then, i imagined
showing my mother. her willow-like frame. me, standing 
only up to her hip again. all of us staring 
at some great prehistoric creature. i should
try to go to a museum when i stop to rest one of these days.
i know i probably won't. this is the kind of thing 
i'll say but never do. there was no dinosaur, just rows
of boxes. the man joked, "they got the bones
packed up is all." when he left he gave me his number
& i lost it on purpose. in my head, i call him 
"dinosaur bones." if mom were still around
i might call her & find a way to tell that story.
slide between the knees of a mountain. machine around me.
maybe it's me. maybe i am the dinosaur. metal &
monsterous. six-teen wheels. darkness spills
across the horizon. i am driving.