95 cents a litre

he nurses this big ol’ sedan into the service station

going about the business of a regular consumer

shrugging off that 95 cents a litre in fuel prices

and it may as well be 99,

but there’s no point complaining

when something in his eyes flash

like he too, right there, has just aged to 99 points

putting the hose into the gas tank

he’s almost unconscious in his stance, almost grey

as if clouds have hijacked his mind’s eye

and he doesn’t even notice the petrol spilling under his car

like an oasis seeping through the texture of a desert floor

it massages the concrete

it brings us all to lick our lips at the sight

a naked, refined body of fuel

wasted at 95 cents a litre,

the station attendant screams

at the rising sea of gasoline

and our aging friend comes back

sorry, he says, in the waking, my father just died...