Watch your car, Senora?
By Patricia Wellingham-Jones

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.

Published in Skylark, 2002

http://www.snowcrest.net/pamelaj/wellinghamjones/home.htm

Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a former psychology researcher/writer/editor who has been widely published in journals, newspapers, anthologies, and online magazines. Her most recent books are Don’t Turn Away: Poems About Breast Cancer, Labyrinth: Poems & Prose, and the forthcoming Poet’s Corner Press Apple Blossoms at Eye Level. She lives in northern California.