Strange how we go on looking in the lessening
light, along the highway, looking for the things thieves pitched
from the smashed windows of our van as they drove and rifled through:
maps, gospel cassettes, ball gloves, receipts and sermon notes,
sleeping bag and candles scattered over miles, deemed
worthless, the ditches deep with grass, unmown. We’re steeped
in the overrun, the laid low, the pooled and going nowhere,
in the tremolo of early evening, mint-tinged,
damp to the knees, even weeds and beer cans gleam
as if belonging here: we are intent, walking
without speaking, bending to gather each thing
as if it had a broken wing, might have flown but landed
wounded in the tall grass, beating. Strange how we go on
as if things matter, as if this were a place
where something essential could be found.
Cars blow by. A whistling cowbird bends
a tattered reed. We follow the light-licked
papers sailing above the grass, the field encroaching,
last winter’s road-salt leaching down.
