So many roads swirled together
in ash colored dust devils
Hadsall and Iliff Keitel and Jackson
Lamb and Long all running on
alphabet unspooled except for

chunks of hay dropped onto
the river bridge from last evening’s baler
while down center of the two-tracks
green spurge and crabgrass widening
pigweed grown so high heads thrum
against the chassis, its own percussion
field edges yet blue with dusty chicory
and mourning doves gleaning gravel
swirling up in threes and fours
only to settle down again

but at the junction a new house
cuts into the sky where
they bulldozed the old man’s shack
him living out his last days
with his six coon hounds
and two Muscovy ducks
with their strange red noses
chickens too scrawny
to even lay an egg

all of them gone now
to ghosts sitting the willow
gone to broken branches
weighed down by brown leaves
the ghosts watching, waiting

next road over, its yellow warning sign
streaked with dust: dead end