They have made me bald and x-rayed me.
I am hollow.
They send me where my roots
Will stick me to the soil.
The sap will not come again.
How odd the highway rolls
Like some great grey serpent
Swimming through a freakish faded sea–
The square yellow patchwork countryside
Where the ridges rise humpbacked in the horizon,
Hazy from their blue vapors.
Black-and-white watercolor cattle
Graze the winter stubble.
The barbed wires buzz
Like icy telegraph lines,
Their posts stiff prisoners.
Pregnant barns and proud silos lie warm
Among the fallow frozen fields.
I am stricken
By the transparent brains of bare trees.
Sequoya Review 