During day 2

Of my drive

From La Jolla

To Princeton,

I thought about

Seeing cars

From earlier

In the trip

Sometime later.

On my way

After dinner

At what is

Now a no go

Though it was

Once the Ho Jo

In fabled

Albuquerque,

Climbing up

I40 east

Three lanes merged

To single file,

Forcing me

To find a slot

In the line.

I kept going

On the right

For quite a ways

Until I

Was forced to blend.

As I pulled

Into the line

I noticed

That two cars up

Was a car

I'd seen before,

Yesterday,

Many hundreds

Of miles back,

Near El Centro

In central

California.

It was a

Mercedes Benz

The green of

Pistachio

Ice cream or

Avocado;

Its unique

License plate was

AR JO 2.

A while later

A second

Vehicle joined

The convoy

Between AR JO

And myself

As we all crawled

Up the hill;

Both vehicles

Between us

Abruptly made

An exit,

Putting the Merc

Directly

In front of me.

This kept up

For many miles

Both on the

Interstate and

Then on a

Local detour,

One of us

Right in front of

The other

(I had passed the

Mercedes

On the detour)

Until the

Detour ended

And traffic

Was finally

Able to

Move on again.

They must have

Pulled off the road

At the end

Of the detour,

Since they were

Suddenly gone

From my view.

About forty

Miles later

They whizzed by me

And the guy

Riding shotgun

Turned back and

Looked at me as

They passed by.

I waved for the

Heck of it.

I wonder if

They recalled

Seeing me, too,

Yesterday?

Later that day

A wide, short

Rainbow appeared

On the right

40 miles off

That stayed bright

For quite a while

And was paired

With another

On the left.

The 'bows were joined

By brilliant

Bolts of lightning

On all sides.

One bolt even

Lined up with

The squat rainbow

On the right.

The bolts kept up

For hours,

As it grew dark

And the rain

Started to fall,

Sometimes in

Spectacular

Branched displays,

Electric streams

Reaching from

Heaven to earth

For a brief

Moment of time.