Samuel Dickerson

Ode to Missing

I’m learning how to lose
a thing I never laid a hand on
- Turnpike Troubadours

The wildfire danger today is low
though the road sign couldn’t know heat
or motion, how it’s everywhere and in this engine,
this piston spark and the dark on dark
of wheels on asphalt for hours in the day-
light and how this traveler’s marriage wears out
more than just the tread and the transmission and the brake
pads. My dad talks about balance, how he used to rest
his stick shift on a hill on its clutch, suspend his self
with a simple machine and I imagine the evening
shine, amber off the side of the car, some gold sepia-tone
filter like I used to think the world was before
I was born, like all memories are. I dream manual, I find
an old road no one goes on and burn up the clutch
though the wildfire danger today is low and the twilight has never  

slowed. Recently I’ve been re-meeting you
in every gear change and radio song. I saw you
the other day and it really was the first time
and now I can feel the friction and warmth rise
out of the rubber and the thick scent of sweet corn
and rain in this humid late August. The wildfire danger
was low today when I met a gray man in overalls and we talked
about how long some have to wait and when he was gone
I cried and since I’ve been trying to describe what tears do
because they certainly didn’t fall. And at the crest of a hill I didn’t
remember, but must have seen before, was the same green
sign, the wildfire danger today is low, but you must know
it lied because even with the heat thief of the rain leaving
itself on everything this engine was still
hot. These trees were still dry. The clutch was shot
and the transmission was stuck
in reverse and the radio could only play
one song. It only ever has.

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Samuel Dickerson is a Best of the Net Award Nominee and has poems published or forthcoming in swamp pink and Harpur Palate. He is currently in the MFA Program at the University of Northern Michigan and he served as poetry editor for The Scarab.