What I like best about the snowplow is morning
then night, but anyway without the sun.
I drive from town to old 16 and back again, wider.
The sound I make’s all mine, like the tunnel from the headlamps,
mine. First I plow with the light and then with the plow.
The best part closes up behind. I could tell you but I won’t
how the farms separate, each one packed around a single light
for prowlers or company. The light that’s modern and blue
stops farther out and sharper than the yellow kind. I’d as soon
steal a chicken in blue. Where the highway makes a triangle
with 16 and county O, a picnic table bellies up.
The tracks fill in. When I wake sometimes
I don’t know the room, there’s nothing to see by
and nothing to see if I could. The fields
are parceled into squares by roads named for letters
but who could know it in the dark?
Anyone can be here when the night thins out.