Red Light
By Heather Leughmyer
An Animal Rights Poem from All-Creatures.org

Red Light
By Heather Leughmyer

At the place where highway 30
Crosses highway 109
I won’t forget that summer day
Your frightened eyes met mine.
Through tiny oval openings
In your hell on eighteen wheels
I stared into your guiltless soul
Now I know how terror feels.
Your back was bruised and bleeding
The result of panicked feet
Attached to desperate bodies
Slowly baking in the heat.
How long had you been traveling
Would you make it there alive
Without a drop of water
Just how long could you survive?

I knew where you were going
And that you could sense the sorrow
If you made it through this brutal trip
You’d still not see tomorrow.
Your hopeless eyes engulfed my heart
That August afternoon
For the first time I looked differently
At my fork, my knife and spoon.

I wanted more than anything
To take you from that truck
To quench your thirst and heal your wounds
To somehow change your luck.
I knew those eyes would haunt me
Such despair I’d never seen
So I made you a promise that fateful day
Just before the light turned green.

Images by Vanessa S Aquarius