The truck in front of me at the Shell

The truck in front of me at the Shell

had a sticker on the gate I knew too well.

A name from a town where the silos stand,

a flat and dusty stretch of tired land.

My mother called to say the mill is gone,

burnt to the dirt before the break of dawn.

I can still taste the grain and the heavy heat

of summers spent on a dead-end street.

The school bus used to kick up such a cloud

the world went quiet and the engine loud.

We’d watch the red lights slowly disappear,

choked out by the dust of every year.