Keep trying...

 Keep trying

you give yourself to someone this way -

full of midnight light and the gold dust of the road

but he  finds you other, amidst the ruins

that could be Egypt, could be Greece,

could be Bikini Atoll

after they duped the natives

you have given him the wheel

 and slid over to the side,

the humming motor still running on last chance Texaco,

and summer burning all around, turning the red cactus flowers

into dried brown fingers,

and he promises to take the curves gently,

to not turn on the radio,

to drive just till the top of the mountain,

to let you take over -

just where the clouds are gathering,

just where the lurking storm has shifted with summer fickle -

as if for the first time,

as if for the last try

-  Miriam Adelman