A plain’s homestead, Depression’s own
splintery gray like driftwood
washed up on this prairie of tall grass,
corn yellow and wind dented.

This house husk of whistling slats
and many wrenchings molders
a baby’s bed and a browning
stove of metastasizing rust
and a flour sack curtain blanched
thin and cloud-white from
an overmuscled sun.

A scarecrow’s bones have I
throwing a stick silhouette against
this shambled phantasm as we two
melt into smudgy clots
of the darkening night.