A Garage by Robert Gray

In one of the side streets

of a small hot town

off the highway


we saw the garage,

its white boards peeling

among fronds and palings.


The sun had cut a blaze

off the day. The petrol pump
was from the sixties—


of human scale
and humanoid appearance
it had a presence,

seemed the attendant
of our adventures on the road,
the doorman of our chances.

We pulled in, for nostalgia,
onto