Paul Bowers

and one time he played
the banjo beneath an overpass
while we waited for a tow
into Alamogordo

and we, my brother and sister and I,
had the quilt palette
in the station wagon—
that aquarium of motion
and hot sleeps

and my mother fanning
herself with a Mesa Verde brochure
then digging saltines
from her mystical purse
to quiet her restless brood
who squawked over space
and music on the radio

and my father playing the banjo
on the shoulder of the interstate
beneath the overpass—
Old Joe Clark
and Fisher’s Hornpipe
and Cinch Mountain Backstep—

and then when the tow truck arrived
to chain us to our rescue
to lift us out of our suffering
he picked Blessed Assurance
for his roadside finale.

I stopped chewing my crackers
and waited, instead, for the foretaste
of glory divine.