Our truck-minder
wears a dirty shirt
over grimy shorts
over dust-choked bare toes,
flashes white smile
and liquid eyes
in calculated
youth-filled charm.
He is joined by two
tiny car-watchers in training
who heap little piles of gravel
on our bumper.
We place a coin
in each beseeching palm.
Screeching like parrots
they race for candy nearby.
One week,
many pot holes later,
we laugh at the gravel
still on the truck.
