He appeared as a heat-haze

in the middle of high-desert

on Interstate 10, mouth agape,

shoulders stooped, sweat-clad,

oversized shirt unbuttoned

to the waist.

Eagles were blaring on XFM –

it’s a girl, my Lord, in a flat-bed Ford

slowin down to take a look at me –

and we were on the other side,

a shifting cloud of raucous speed

sending arc-tailed scorpions scuttling,

fat rattlers flinching from the fury

of our glinting, red Cadillac.

I had forgotten government notices

(warnings about hitchhikers)

nailed to posts at intervals

twenty miles or so back down

the road towards Fort Stockton,

but now, idly chopping at home

in my sun-drenched kitchen,

when Eagles play I think of him

again, stood there, and wonder

if he survived;

or, had things been otherwise,

who might have explained to

Houston car-hire the cause of the

wreckage returned to them:

Not me; not him; not men

from forensics head-to-toe

in white space suits,

combing through charred remains,

searching for passports, matching

teeth to Foreign Office records.