I wonder if I will ever get my garden dug up and planted. It is either covered with snow, or rain, or chickens. At the moment it is covered with all three.

Yesterday I bought tires. Today I will buy an oil change and an inspection and possibly a registration. It is that kind of week. Sometimes I dream of how wonderful it would be to not own a car. My older son, who just received his picture license in the mail, dreams of how wonderful it would be to not have to drive his parents' ugly old Suburu. My younger son dreams of how wonderful it would be to drive a chariot while wearing Roman armor.

At the moment, I would merely like to dream. I appear to have crossed into the land of insomnia, and here's a poem about sleep and cars that seems strangely appropriate to this disconnected post.

Sleep

Dawn Potter

I flaunt my silk underwear,

one more slit-eyed bitch

clogging your cracked headlights.

Any old hag is the girl of your dreams,

and I

am only halfway down the road to rot,

thumb-bone flagging your sleek

Cadillac.

Dust blunders at loose ends,

tornado blue, thick as brains.

I slouch ditch-side,

time's cynic.

Driver, don't make me wait.

Just hit,

hit, and run.

[from How the Crimes Happened (CavanKerry Press, 2010)]