At the Esso Station by Nicola Vulpe

​At the Esso Station

The service island lights were without pity.
Everything that was, that might have been
was in them. And the gentle snow
we brushed from the windshield, and the hood.
 
I would have liked
that all things had ended then.
A drunk in a pickup – ice-slip! missing the bend,
taking us with him
 
through the display glass, 
the racks of 10W30, STP, blue antifreeze,
through the pyramids of Red Bull and Coke, the chip aisle,
on through the men’s magazines, their calendars,
souped up Dodges and Mustangs, old Camaros,
 
into the coffee machine, the mop
propped up beside the restroom door,
the cinder-block wall.
 
I would have liked that. That pickup truck.
Or the next.
 
We tapped the icy wipers, blew on our aching fingers.
The truck eased silently around that bend,
faded into the swirling night.




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​Bio: Nicola Vulpe considers poetry an unfortunate habit, which he has supported by working as a computer programmer, university professor, senior manager in hi-tech, and technical writer. He studied at the University of Ottawa, and the Sorbonne, where he completed a doctorate in philosophy. He has published two books of poetry: When the Mongols Return and Blue Tile, and a novella, The Extraordinary Event of Pia H., who turned to admire a chicken on the Plaza Mayor. He has also edited Sealed in Struggle, an anthology of Canadian poetry about the Spanish Civil War, and written articles on subjects as diverse as the Epic of Gilgamesh and Norman Bethune. He likes to think that “The People with No Friends”, an article he published about the Kurds at the start of the First Gulf War (Bush Sr.), helped save some lives.


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Image - Jonathan Kennedy - 
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