Mud-caked and defeated / we rove over a country choked / into submission.
Mud-caked and defeated
we rove over a country choked
into submission. The thunderstorms
that broiled the night before
leave it soaked and steaming.
We sweat in a sick grey dome.
Back, in a colonial cottage
I lie in the company of a mosquito
and try to think of a time before uprooting,
repotting, allotting (how propertarian!)—
Before gaffa tape strewn in aprovenancial dirt
and the plains wanderer’s baking bitumen grave.
I try, but fail
to think of
a gentler cultivation.