Through the Cracks

I am in love with the sound
of rushing air between cracks in a car door
bold and bland as it rocks me to sleep, neck craned
in the back of a Chevrolet on the way to Dent, still
two days out, but I could doze in the car while Dad drove,
listen to spacey music as I looked up,
up at the stars and when I was lucky, the moon,
which held all of my greatest hopes and dreams
suspended in the sky in a beacon of light,
even though I know now it has an albedo of 11%
and it can't hear me through the vacuum of space.

The dog was asleep in the back.
"Like a child," I'd think, and reach out
to touch his soft black ears.
In the back of a Chevy Caprice, almost
midnight now, his eyes open, search out mine.
With a lick of his lips, says "hi," then shifting paws
eyes close again, golden brown suns retiring for the night,
plus we've run out of things to do by now
in the back of a Chevy Caprice Classic on the way to Dent,
Minnesota, where we will certainly swim in the many lakes,
the one shaped like a star in particular, where the dog
will learn to swim too because my dad will carry him
into the water and he'll flail about at first but finally catch on.

My dog does not howl at the moon because
he knows, like me,
that the moon is not listening.
We've stopped for gas, so
I take him around the block, fill his dish
with some water from the outside spout.
Says thank you with his eyes.
Are we getting back in the car now?
Longs to hear the sound of rushing air
through the cracks of a Chevrolet
on the way to Dent.