by the side of the road, don’t stop.
It’s a trick and you will be robbed
or worse. They put cribs on the freeway
to entice us to pull over to help
the baby we think is there, but there is
no baby. If I saw a crib by the side of the road
I would inevitably stop because it could be real
and I could never sleep knowing
I might have saved a life even if mine
were in jeopardy, even if there were no baby
I would kiss the bare wicker where the infant
might have been, I would lift the imagined
girl or boy, hold it up to the sky
while they stripped me of everything—
cash in my pocket, silk jacket, last words—
they can have it all because maybe I
could have saved a baby, maybe this
is something I could have done, not for myself
but for a stranger, something that would matter,
like the moon matters to the night traveler,
like the sun matters to tomatoes, like the bees
matter to the white roses struggling in my backyard.