War built the roads you cross. Men with bad
hearts or flat feet broke rocks, backs, laying
this pave like stateside wives. Strawberries
grow red as handpainted signs which urge you
toward them, a hunger. You never stop, expecting
baskets spoiled bloody or already eaten. Speed
past the Amish boys who don’t drink or die
in battle. Flowered tourists pull over to steal pictures
because they can. In the fields the brownest horses
never look back. Only in towns do you slow, steady
when told. Folks in Boalsburg mow their tombstones,
women water flags in Woodward. Hotels keep out
VACANCY the way the Sunday best of a lost soldier
dangles in mother’s closet. At the corner store a dime
won’t even buy an operator’s voice. Ribbons yellow
as hearts clutch to every porch. You leave town thinking
of wars, revolutionary, civil. Where do all the black folks
get buried in this country? German graves push up
against the road, Hackenberg & Gunderman almost touch
your mirror. Watch for the warnings: Bridge May
Be Icy, the Confederate flag outside Lewisburg.
Past Valentine’s Roofing Repair, cemeteries
grow up around the ripe cows. Don’t stop to take
it in, just pass by those buildings with flags hung
like black men, those post offices where
the slowest, the most words are kept.
