Stateline, Oak Grove, KY

Stateline, Oak Grove, KY

Walking next to barbed wire separating cornfield from alfalfa,
we looked down the gravel driveway
a quarter-mile to the covered carport where Dad’s ugly beige Buick sat rusting.
Red earth caked our sneakers as we stepped off the drive to gather
a few unfortunate toads to fling through the air.
We watched as they discovered flight
then land hard on the dry tilled earth, splatter, and spill their guts.
We were boys being sadistic boys, instigators of early crimes against nature,
for which we denied committing, for which we eventually confessed.
We later talked about how our wrongdoings left scars.
But they were all forgivable, we thought, because we lived such measured lives
where the land seemed so uncompromisingly segmented,
lines people drew to mark what was theirs--
common knowledge, like how to breathe the summer heat
so as not to injure our throats.
We even knew that the corn and alfalfa weren’t for any of us to eat;
They were feed for the beef and pork the neighbors were raising.
But the sweet stink of tobacco drying in their ramshackle barns
could make the night sweeter and even more welcome than the moon and stars.
And that Indian-summer sky, silver-blue, left the frosty air silent,
and purged the guilt from our souls.

J.H. Lee, ’09