the backroad to Florence, the one along Elm that cuts past the McDermott trailer park--
from matt's house past Cedar and the old liquor store at 50mph the cicadas sound more like a cry or a lingering scream the crickets don't stop for passing trucks creaking to the metronome of a swishing cow tail
farmers switch off their brights, come around corners slow, in striped beat up Chevys, rusty toolboxes weakly sliding from side to side like their owners in threadbare leather seats the young kids trail close, bumper to bumper on a two-lane road, just me and some kid named after his grampa, poppy, Clint, who needs to get home before mama chews him out--
sunday service still warm from this morning where a single beetle clung to the wall and translated my father's sermon, morse code for the elders, for the elk and deer, he's been known to speak to hummin'birds anyway, I think.