Road Trip

Davis McCombs

Over the singed and brittle 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 rust, we are

a hurried sweep of shadow, a sleek chromatic

            gleam the cold sun follows

                        with its blue-orange dot of concentration.

We scurry like a flea across the hide of something

            both immense and underfed,

                        a creature from the mind’s culvert,

an animal concocted out of barbed-wire ribs

            and cockleburs, the grass its rippling fur

                        through which our small wake passes like a shiver.