You have cultivated your land, I can see.

it gets late as we drive.
old unpaved roads throwing dust on us,
front seat and back.
the wheels still rolling smoothly.

i stare out the window and avoid noting the crops:
what grows
how many cows
how many crows.

when you get older you told me,
you will teach your kids to sow
raspberry and strawberry plants.

next dust storm you told me,
you will teach me how to drive,
how to shoot arrows.

there is probably
so much dust on the road
during these storms
that there forms a secret opponent
thirty feet away
and your arrow lands completely between your own eyes.

outside the dust storm
the sky bleeds red and your memory
becomes scratched with pieces of it.

running through fields.
rolling in the mud.
the air between the hay bales
is changing to coral.
rolling in the mud,
shooting arrows from the road.
for no good reason except the clean that will come.

U-Pick Berries! like U-turn, turn around!

people who were sitting indoors moved to the front porch when the crash sounded so they could enjoy the noise.

neighbours gossiped for miles,
bikers, runners, those who had just come from the detour.
policemen stood smiling, redirecting traffice.
an old bus sat dismantled at the side of the road in front of a blue truck that had crashed.
dreamcatchers hung from the dashboards of passing vehicles.
old men carried canes, wore sunhats.
old ladies took the drivers seat, stretched their arms around the chair,
shifted their weight so their triceps stretched.
my hair escaped in curls. my sister sat beside me unbathed, running her hands over her acne. you know,

if you ate something other than chocolate you might feel a little better.
a little less
crash and burn.