Sangamon
It was Starland Vocal Band on the radio in my mom's orange Vega.
Sometimes she would let me shift gears as we sped over the Sangamon River.
'Afternoon Delight' was a song that scared me from the first.
My friends told me it was about sex. And I was 12.
The bridge hung over a deep divide and at the bottom ran the river,
Surrounded on this day in late summer by humidity and dragonflies.
An hour earlier, I had been in a stranger's car. And I wasn't entirely sure I would ever leave it alive.
And then I was sitting next to my Mom and this song was on the radio.