chase (draft)

"Chase" or "Yet not"

Warm autumn sun 
pierces my windshield
as I drive.

Soybeans dry in the field,
a neat row of round bales marking their boundary.
Milo shoots skyward
ramrod straight and step ladder tall
though some strange stalks rise above
all the rest.

Crooked hedgewood fence posts,
splintering,
strung together with barbed wire,
fly by my windows.

Cars like mine tear down the dirt roads, dust clouds billowing behind.
All things familiar.
Yet not.

Beautiful church building rises up from the flat land;
the house across the dry dirt road is absent, prairie grown in its place.

There is the ditch where the wildflowers spilled over one another freely,
tangled together in a rainbow of blooms;
now shaved smooth by a lawn mower.

The walnuts still fall from the tree at the bend in the road
but the house just beyond stands stoically empty
(and no dogs chase my car).

Warm autumn sun
pierces my windshield 
as I drive by
all things familiar.
(Yet not.)


-mk

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