A green sign reading “Nebraska the
good life” pocked with bullet holes the static
scars the power poles trace east-
ward a boarded up service station ex-
hausted March snow in dormant grass a
sky you couldn’t
touch but if you could it would be cold dripping
slate not dripping exactly the frozen
fog inert for all practical
purposes the gas station’s white metal
siding oxydizing at a geologic pace the
gravel lot gashed by tires be-
low the stone Our Lady of Peace
statue’s petrified outstretched gesture the
semis ascending west to Cheyenne one
red cab one silver cab one blue cab
I’m headed the other way but not yet
I’ll stop another place for the night but not yet
in downtown Pine Bluffs Wyoming a yellow
Union Pacific caboose parked on a
siding behind a cyclone
fence hasn’t moved in decades
a sort of peace but
you couldn’t touch it
the junkyard sprawl behind the
statue’s back the
power poles’ quantum motion
Jack Hayes
© 2010
[To see other poems in this sequence, please click on the "UP Poems" label]