His blue-grey pickup takes shape
in the driveway, condensing
slowly from a tarnished winter dawn.
A metamorphosis like watching
a photograph develop. At 6:30
I know it’s out there, but hidden
in thick, suggestive darkness.
Too soon it will materialize, hulking,
real enough in morning light to fire
up and drive off in with a diesel roar—
out of the frame for days.
Susan Rooke lives in Austin, Texas. Her poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Flutter Poetry Journal, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Christian Science Monitor and Stone Telling, among other publications. She edits the Austin Poetry Society’s monthly MuseLetter, and has just completed the first book of a planned fantasy trilogy. Her enthusiasms lie in the peculiar, including folklore, cryptozoology and Forteana.
© 2011, Susan Rooke
Halfway Down the Stairs 
One comment on “When He Leaves, by Susan Rooke”