While Waiting For a Stoplight

litter of leaves by the side of the road, yellowing paper, soggy with last night’s beer, spilled from a bottle thrown from a car and smashed in the gutter. dead something-or-other, maybe a mouse, lies just outside of my car in the road. gaze straight ahead, to the beat-up white Chevy, sputtering black smoke from a rusty, bent tailpipe, drooping toward the ground; worn bumper stickers declare “I Love America” and “Divers do it Deeper”- rebel flag careless in the corner of a windshield, shadowy head of a car’s unknown driver, waiting, like me, to race off to somewhere. now the light changes and we all leave forever this moment, this corner….this stoplight scene.