Road Trip
Davis McCombs
Over the singed1 and brittle2 roadside stalks,
over cotton, corn and stubble,
our car's dark bug-shape slithers.
Over the metal drainpipe, over the oil rig,
and the burned field where a windmill
cranks its pinch of rust3, we are
a hurried sweep of shadow, a sleek4 chromatic5
gleam the cold sun follows
with its blue-orange dot of concentration.
We scurry6 like a flea7 across the hide of something
both immense and underfed,
a creature from the mind”s culvert,
an animal concocted8 out of barbed-wire ribs9
and cockleburs, the grass its rippling10 fur
through which our small wake passes like a shiver.
1 singed
