Driven to the Top

of the ridge, where the casinos were stars in the desert night. The smell of Greece permeated the truck cab’s air, something like old, unwashed blankets, and my friend, a PhD, who was from Greece. Talk of Nietzsche flooded my ears beyond where Hendrix’s guitar had screeched. I didn’t understand the shooting stars as free spirits, go figure. They were more like asteroids soon to be gaseous, or, for the bigger ones, meteorites. There was nothing in the way of metaphor about me. Then the sun tripped over the mountains like a clumsy fat guy. Ants followed one another over the rocks. We sucked up deep, cool breaths. For a minute they seemed like our last. But, go figure, they weren’t.