It’s sensational,

the way my duffel bag chafes my inner calves

which are actually my childhood.

Your car’s hood dusted with morning frost

and the barn cat’s paw prints all over.

Since it’s legal in New Mexico, you’ve let the car idle

half an hour before we needed it, steam escaping

anywhere the metal isn’t fused.

As we pass rows of what I can only compare to blackened coat racks

on both sides of Highway 94,

you always search the radio for a beat

to set me free. But those relentless skeletons

of the ponderosa pine

remind me still that a fire’s stifling breath

takes a summer to burn out.

Green needles once shot from the limbs like fireworks

against a black sky.

Back when the land behind our trailer was a forest

you’d walk into it alone

with a gap-toothed chainsaw; you kept us warm

until there was nothing left

to feed our chimenea.

On one ride, I squeaked when a grape-sized mouse,

shaken free from the glove box, landed on my sneaker.

You laughed when you saw it bounce away

to somewhere we could not

and you lightly squeezed the back of my neck

like you were checking on my ripeness.

I love how I broke your focus, how the car never stopped floating.

Where you take me, I learn fundamentals

and the Blue Devils playbook

coach ripped off the internet;

you wait in the parking lot, and while I’m gone

run over skunks,

which I know now were made up

of rolling papers.

Your key-shaped roach clip

like a secret pen scratch in the phonebook

beside a random number.

On the way home we pass the empty field

where you make me practice switching gears

and slapping the turn signal.

Years before basketball and rides to practice,

but a day just as brisk, (maybe I was four?)

my hands just as close to the heater vents,

passing this same field, I sat passenger

with my legs crossed

because I enjoyed the look or comfort.

Or because I could.

Dad, did you question something about me

that did not yet have an answer? You asked

if you should pull over,

if I needed to pee,

which, getting a sense

you didn’t expect me to sit this way otherwise,

I answered yes to,

and which was a lie I thought about,

gun-shy on the rumble strips,

wishing for any gush of recycled liquid

to shoot from the small elephant trunk

peeled back in my hands.

I stepped away, spat loud into the crocodile cracks

of that beaten highway road

to signal my finish,

thinking maybe I had tricked you,

needlessly wiping my dry fingers on my pants

when I saw you look up. The car door left open

and ticking. All that collected warmth spilling out

into a New Mexican cold front

just for us to build it back up like a hotbox,

that you and I, Pops, could share once again.

I envy places where the trees stay frozen year-round.

Always basketball season, always riding with you.