When I asked him how he was riding out the great recession,
he said it all unraveled after the black horse.
I was riding in his taxi in Tucson, heading west.
Let me make this clear: the points of the compass should always guide us,
and of course the sun. We were talking at dawn.

It was dark, and he was heading west,
west of Pecos in the vast and starry night of Texas.
He put his rig in the hammer lane to pass another trucker.
The intimation of a black horse appeared in his headlights,
the vaguest shape of haunch, the apparition of an equine nightmare.
The horse was facing west. No eye shine. No option.
The slam of rig and black horse orbiting into pieces
in the majestic black night of west Texas.

This changed his life, he told me.
The black horse was his credit default swap.

Now he drives a taxi.
He dropped me at the bus station.
I was heading south to Sonora in the wakening light of day.