I passed a truck that looked like yours today
(the marital morph)
Once you had a jazz tab
and recited the poems of Pablo Neruda
You stopped with words still dripping from your deliberate tongue
to scoop rainbow plastic wrappers from the delicate arctic tundra
and stuffed them in your tattered pack
without dropping a word
Once you stroked a thoughtful beard
and read about Salt and The Story of Bottled Water
You revolted against domesticity to embody adventure
and nudged wife and newborn to the land of broken-swings-still-dark-come-midday
to serve in a place where expiration dates could be shuffled
without CT scans and trauma bays
Once you grew a six a.m. shadow during a shift under the moon
and left a trail of half-read dog-eared Lolita, Noam and McCarthy.
You put on your yoke with eyes cast upon provision
stopping to paint with pudding or drop delirious lemons
advocating for bikes without training wheels and swimming with no clothes
to craft a fine line between conformity and self-determination.
Now with just three grey hairs camouflaged by a mop
you still skirt pithy lines in favour of metaphors that gobsmack.
I passed a truck that looked just like yours today
but there was a crotch rocket propped up on scraps of plywood in its box
and the man behind the wheel was having a go with a slim toothpick
under the veil of a cockeyed foam front emblazoned with Fraktur font.
