Getting to Yellowstone

 

Getting to Yellowstone

Breakdown in Idaho so I walk with little Lily 
to a hovel of a house where Lily says 
“This doesn’t look like a happy place to live”
because she wonders about such things. 

A woman’s voice “¿Quién?”
I explain with gestures we need a phone 
if she has one. Door opens. Cautious, wordless,
face sweaty-slick, she lets us enter.
An ancient dial phone on the wall. 
Lily says “We’re safe here.”

Tow driver Ethan crams Lily and me 
into his cab, cool toward us until Lily 
clutching a book, always a book, asks 
“Would you mind towing us to Yellowstone?” 
Then he smiles. We chat.

Ethan’s from Oakland, California
so I ask why he’s in potato land.
“I prefer the slow life,” he says
but his wife doesn’t so she has a job in LA.
Lily says “How will you have children?”
Ethan laughs. “Slowly” he says.

Lily and I set up a tent in Ethan’s back yard.
Awaiting repair we read Mr. Popper’s Penguins 
by the Snake River where penguins don’t dwell
but might find ice-cold water. I tell Lily 
we’ll reach Yellowstone by and by. 
“No hurry,” says Lily. 

…..

First published in Hobo Camp Review 
Thanks to James Duncan, editor
Photo by Jacob W Frank

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