Interstate Five

Interstate Five

What remains of these lost deltas
after the mills shut down: an art
of disappearing, black-windowed bars,
the towers of a closed factory
still blinking their red lights to hide
no work’s inside. For years
I drove past these roadside diners
carved out of rain, trailer parks lined
with European trees, the truck stop
where cigarette smoke drifts
into the air like a crease
in an old photo. After Vietnam
my father worked in such a place,
a gas station where he could hide
from his own father, sleeping
among beer cans in the owner’s
storage loft—wages and cheap rent
in exchange for silent work
pumping fuel for tourists
southbound to California sun.
I go north instead, follow the seam
of diminishing sky as firs crowd in
to hem the highway. Low mist
makes an iridescent sweat on asphalt,
ghost-hint of gasoline as I pull off
for the Exxon. Even now
I forget the Oregon law against pumping
my own gas. I’m startled by the man
who appears beside my truck—
young, buzzed hair already thinning,
a vet, maybe, from more recent wars.
He leans on my door, asks how much.
Tattoos of flowers and a bullet
like a weird chrysalis
spill from his rolled-up sleeve.