My little red wagon of beer 

It was Christmas Eve, and I needed to get the beer in. 

No cars on the street, people elsewhere, getting with people. 

Christmas in full bloom, and a little red wagon next door.

Liquor store closing in an hour, Christmas so on the way, 

I nabbed the handle of the wagon and dashed down Rockhill Road!

As I skipped along the road, red and green cars whizzing by  

nowhere near as fast as me and my little red wagon were whizzing, 

I remembered I’d never had a wagon before—but so what? 

I said, what of it? and ran even faster, because I had one now, 

was on a beer run with one—on Christmas Eve.

At the liquor store, I drove the wagon right inside. 

Did they look at me weird? No, they loaded as much beer as

they could get into my little red wagon, laughed and took photos, 

(one of them hugged me, took my cash) and I took off back up the hill. 

I was energized, but pulling the little red wagon had changed, full of beer

as it was, and yet—I felt like the sexy Italian driver of the wagon 

in the Room With a View movie, pulling that wagon of merry togetherness up 

to their getaway country resort. Even if I was only pulling a wagon of beer.

But was I lonely, just me and the beer? I was not. 

I had HER phone number on a piece of paper beneath an unlit candle

up on the mantle of my stone fireplace. She didn’t have a car either. 

So I picked her up in the little red wagon!