By W. E. Butts
for Rustin Larson
These days, words from the gospels
and old hymns are rolled out on screens
across eternal Midwestern sky.
Somewhere, between Iowa City
and Cedar Rapids, driving along
miles of nearly vacant road,
past cornfields that were once ocean,
row of glittering pumpkins,
and Amish farmers riding their slow carriages,
my friend and I are discussing
transcendental meditation and Dutch women,
high school football and local politics,
the recently sanctioned shooting
of overpopulated deer, with bow and arrow.
I look out as a flock of finches
rises and falls in thermals of blue air,
then rises again high above the bowed heads of cattle
grazing in an open field edged with hay bales,
and the offering of road before us
repeats itself like some chant
from a prayer that would take us home forever.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 11
