~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Weathervane

Mississippi Delta. I take to rural roads,
spring heat leaning hard into summer.

Wind shifts and rustles like a stray remark.
Tractor dust lends the air a mealy realm.

Some sweat-burnt farmer stares out over his fields
as if waiting for day to darken.

Storms, down to fading clouds, leave creeks to flood
as if they’ve grown tired of their borders.

The scent of mown grass and clover wells up from the ground.
Ditch banks run high with arrowleaf and asters.

Somewhere in all this distance,
an A.M. station falters for good.

A scarecrow at the edge of vision stands thin as a ghost ship.
Footpaths give way to extinction.

Blacksnakes slide into the undergrowth of their birth.
A weathervane rooster is rusted hard to north.

Defunct railroads are shambles of crossties and iron.
Huddled deer leap into light.

The sky blossoms with sparrows.
A house sits so abandoned it could be solitude’s last known address.

Since Johnny Marched Home to Ascension Parish

He feels his roof
shoulder icy rain,
feels his vows of marriage flex

like a point man’s eyes
trolling thickets
for tripwires,

like candle smoke
a woman rushes past
on her way out of a room,

fog bending
through the bedroom window
of her dreaming child.

Or like those wooded spaces
between levees —
hollows only thieves can gauge

as their hands
seek a way
to hold the dark.