Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time,
seven years ago,
I drove East-Texas Highway 79,
the same one
I traveled on Monday.

The same one
where once upon a time Little Will's plastic Go-Kart
flew off the car and bounced roughly down the road
still new from Santa Clause.

Seven years ago, I didn't know
when I stopped to take a picture
of my brand new first Mini by a wooden roadside flag,
that I'd meet a biker named Mike
in Hope, Arkansas--further
down the road

No one on any planet
has ever been sillier over
or more enamored with a car
than I was driving tiny pepperwhite
that September morning,
heading toward Cape Cod,
taking her picture, for Pete's sake,
like a mamma taking a snapshot of her baby.

Then I rolled on down the road,
seven years ago,
and met Mike in Hope
at an old train depot-turned-visitor's-center.

Two days ago, just as I spied that same painted roadside flag,
seven years older and showing its age,
at the exact moment I was remembering that day in Hope, that trip,
the phone rang, and it was Mike!

"How cool, how ironic, how timely!" I said

We talked about that day, we laughed, we remembered
that train depot.  "I got lost there and can't find my way back," he said.

"I'll be sixty-six tomorrow," I told him.
"That's just a number," he said.

I'm way past taking pictures of a car,
for heaven't sake!  Who would do that, but a young
girl of 58 in love with a car, in love with rolling
along back roads, and about
to fall in love with a stranger in a depot?

I'm way past that silliness now,
way down the road,
now all grown-up to Sixty-Six
seven years north on Highway 79