Summer on the Other Side of Town

“A truck or a car doesn’t have a soul,”

she insists after he says the whine

of the freeway traffic sounds lonesome.

It takes something away from him

that he can’t explain even to himself

when she declares flatly how wrong he is.

He is about to try to say it another way,

but she says after she hears the train whistle

sliding through the night to their bedroom,

“And that damned train is a pain in the ass.”

“Good Night,” was all he could think to say.