Peg Leg By Ken Gierke

With Lincoln in the rearview

and Casper well north of us,

the monotony of heading straight

west across the Nebraska plains

lets my mind stray further

down the road to concerns

about our destination, 

an empty house in windswept

Wyoming with no life left to it,

or just enough to cast a pall

over these blue skies.

As we approach North Platte,

Peg Leg starts coming

over the speakers with guitar

and piano almost as one voice

coaxing the drums.

And they don’t stop

when Ron Carter comes in

with his piccolo bass, because 

now all of them are dancing

and that bass is singing.

Our hotel is two miles straight off

the interstate, but when the piano

takes the lead I make a hard right

as soon as we exit.

It’s like this combo knows

that Peg Leg Brewing is right

down the road, a place with great beer

and the same positive vibe.

Where the brewer turns

a handicap into an asset,

with the prosthetics he’s worn

through life, shoes and all,

hanging from the ceiling.

I let that piano play out

and soak in more of the bass

as it dances its way to the end

before we walk into the pub.

Just being there, timed perfectly

with music that’s full of life,

tells me that things aren’t all bad.

We’ll head out in the morning,

and I’ll make sure that Peg Leg

is playing when we pull into Casper.

Ken Gierke is a retired truck driver, transplanted to mid-Missouri from Western New York. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming both in print and online in such places as The Rye Whiskey Review, Rusty Truck, Trailer Park Quarterly, The Gasconade Review, and River Dog Zine. Glass Awash, published by Spartan Press, is his first collection of poetry. His website: https://rivrvlogr.com/