The Fine Art of Steering a Compact While Being Towed by a Pickup

Nothing broadcasts your impotence to the world
so loudly as your wimpy four-cylinder
stalling in the middle of the road
with several busy-goers honking behind

until the Hawai'i plates on an extended-cab Ford
shine their Aloha with rainbows and pineapples
through the pendulous melancholy of
a fog-cloud morning, road trip now in limbo.

Nothing knowing of mechanics or the
Good Samaritan syndrome he's stricken with,
I endeavor to shoot the breeze and ask how
long he's been on the mainland. "I'm

not from Hawai'i," says Bryan, "but that story
is too painful to tell here. A truck I couldn't sell for
a thousand cost me
that much plus losses, but I'd sooner pay that

than sell my truck short to a sly island haggler,"
and on to hooking up heavy-duty bolts and a
towing cable. Steering the compact at the end
of this umbilical, which it resembles in form and kind,

involves little more than riding the brake
and keeping the line taut--harder than it sounds.
Going downhill means that i must use the
hand brake, always go slower than the truck in front.

Half an hour later drops me at a repair shop,
no worse for wear except the umbilical, frayed from
tricky corners that caught it under my tire
to be jerked out sharply by 200 horses.

My essence is immobilized. No more daydreaming
of putting down the convertible top that I no doubt
would have in a perfect world and feeling the wind
blow kisses that take my breath away, frozen but alive.