Junkyard goats and a one-eyed cat were our hosts...

    ...myself and the Sledge

    but there was Terry too.

“Would you be trying to fuck me...?”
    he recounted to me his conversation with the internet service
    that wanted, for a small continuous fee, to list his automotive repair shop
    in an online local business directory

Local being Eads, CO
And had the Sledge and I counted on her Isuzu breaking down on a Sunday afternoon pilgrimage
    to the remote plains
    where Col. Chivington had once proven himself to be
    a madman, an idiot, and a murderous sonofabitch forevermore
We would not have been graced by this robust slice of Americana

Journeying city pilgrims can only find such
        riding in style
            atop an on-call tote truck
        into a village closed for the day

But the goats
    the eerie
            eerie
    goats
with their junkyard habitat

so content to stare at us
all the while instinctively maintaining pace with us as we moved casually

    the grace
        the choreography on their part

    safe to say we were one with the goats in that moment

“We don’t get many visitors out this way,”
    I was convinced I heard one of them say in our language
        (because make no mistake: they had their own)

    but it might have been the cat
    who was well-cared for save the fact that one of its eyes was
                gone
    and only recently
    Never mind how we could tell how recently
        nor how we knew that it wasn’t much longer for this world
        despite its personable demeanor
        and apparently insatiable wish to just touch us
            (which sadly was quite unacceptable to us)

As I called home to warn that I would be home neither for church nor the Lost series finale
The former Col. Sledge did her best to accommodate and confirm Terry’s UFO concerns

This slice of Americana was
    in the end
        quite good to us
    as we of the city all imagine and hope in such situations

    trading in the same currency as us
        the fiscal kind and
        the humanity kind
    But that they took an out of town check was especially appreciated

Repairs completed, we gave our thanks and made our way
The Sledge urging me to make some last minute covert photography
    as if we would ever forget
but just so we would be believed
and so we would too

The distance we made
    did not diminish the weighty stare of junkyard goats