Driving Late Night with My Uncle

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley

We are out driving
through farmland, late
night, our truck
running slow and rough
until it stops mid-turn
and will not restart
no matter how hard
I turn the key.  Then
my uncle is laughing
running slow and rough
he says, like me.
He opens
his coat, he is
nothing,
a gray mass with one
red spot beating
as if it were a heart.