Hitchhiking

The heat bakes the ground dry.
Jaundiced rubble clumping into clods
Brittle as eggshells as we stamp melodies
To tense melancholy
After hours of speeding traffic and no sympathy.
Only chalk to mark the time.
Too hot to sit, and road-dust staining
The whites of pleading eyes.
Another car, a lorry, another car.
My arm striped like Indian Summer, bruised
From the effort
Of flagging down transport.
Night creeping like fingers,
We huddle, lost in smallness,
The sky stretching over us,
Obscuring us,
Rabbits in headlights.