Dry Highway Coyotes

Billboards roar by. Country highways groan beneath his tires.
Sunsets scream in chrome reflections. Dusk soaks his helmet.
Every star shoots and chases him through the new darkness.
He parks in the desert and sleeps with one eye on the coyotes.

Hears a stone skitter across the cracked earth and wakes.
Stares at the scrim of darkness and listens. Waits.

He growls by collapsed barns and crumbling hamlets.
Passes cacti and mountains like forgotten street signs.
A fire in the distance. Or factory smoke. Black clouds.
The coyotes like chameleons blend with the sand. Watching.

Lightning stabs the horizon. Outlines of animals along the shoulder.
He parts the sea of the flooded road as the storm howls.

Spends his last dollar on gasoline in a town outside a town.
Countryside blends like watercolors after the first hundred miles.
He explodes from the parking lot. Leaves flames behind.
The skyline swallows him. Silence sweeps in behind.

The coyotes trail. Cloaked in a new storm. Wet and hungry.
They stalk tire tracks to the coast. Smelling him smelling them.