Peeps

We drive home in the rain - a hectoring spray. The car is preoccupied; four significands - a dog, an ex-wife, a son and a prevailing spouse. There are gossiping ghosts also; past memories too damp now to be defined. Some link arms and whisper together. Some stare at the back of my head. The living and dead bunch together in the Chevy as pale as marshmallows in this grey and sluicing light. Ex-wife and new wife don’t like the way I drive, apparently I have aged terribly. The dog loves me, but is a moody and wants out. My son twiddles with his phone, deleting yesterday’s play list, probably also deleting Mom and Dad at least until the end of the ride. I think we are all in love with someone here. I think the rain and the road are in love. They splash over each other as if they will never part. When it pours like this A car has to know how to see beyond its lights. The wipers must know how to clean up each moment before it becomes momentous. There are doubts about the present, it is not as concrete as the highway a few a years back. There are patched up potholes, but the rain is eating its way into the run-down earth. The visibility is not as clear as those trips we took when we were much fewer. My circle of askew relationships is mushrooming. Grandchildren, even great grand-children, squeezed up to my past and present hauntings. The Malibu is getting old. I may have to get a big rig and trailer just to carry the personal luggage of all of us peeps.