Midwestern Elegy
What
this highway has left standing are cemetery stones,
white and pocked as bones rising for
markers;
the wooden bird, arms flapping in
this wind: clack/click, clack/click.
The
road is a gentle curve beyond—what you’ve seen a thousand
times—
thin white arm of sycamore, then one
field startles you with green.
The
farmer’s new silos will be there forever,
now the measure of flatness, and what
you’ve heard today—
the skeletal remains of a girl, twenty,
found. Blackbirds swarm to the wires.
Cornstalks
bend at the knees.
The
last barn you pass gapes at you
holy and with its teeth out.
Bonnie Maurer
has an MFA from