On the I-5

The sun sets over the retainment wall,
some shade for the pilgrims who've left the safety
of their air conditioning to get a better look at the reason
their night's plans have been delayed.

Still silhouettes of palms look ablaze through the waves
rising off the freeway. Inching forward in my '89 Oldsmobile,
in between spraying water on my legs, I notice fresh patches
of cinderblock along the wall. They mark other places and times
where lives have been altered.

The wall becomes a close relative to those lost, it
remembers them. It remembers how its face was scarred, changed.
It remembers the lost, their entrance and exit from its life
and how brief that time was.