I’ve yet to walk these cornstalks

or under a blue sky to stroll

one of these country roads.

Roads, which like blown seeds, skip

from field to field, and must lead somehow

to a house and story.

For to me, these roads are only safe for driving,

a place where I look through my window to watch

oars of cornhusks rowing across a plain.

 

Though the more I drive, the more I know

someone like me does not come out so far

to get lost or let go. I have family here

in a small house in Patch Grove, Wisconsin.

And when I was a child, I remember burying

my grandmother there, where amidst the tears

of that morning, I marveled how butterflies

combed her tombstone with a spiritual air,

how my fingers changed states

tracing her name on a cut of marble rock.