to see how we made out
after the duster.
He didn’t come to court me.
I didn’t think he had.
We visited more than an hour.
The sky cleared enough to see Black Mesa.
I showed him my father’s pond.
Mad Dog said he was going to Amarillo,
to sing, on the radio,
and if he sang good enough,
they might give him a job there.
“You’d leave the farm?” I asked.
He nodded.
“You’d leave school?”
He shrugged.
Mad Dog scooped a handful of dust,
like a boy in a sandpit.
He said, “I love this land,
no matter what.”
They were scarless.
Mad Dog stayed longer than he planned.
He ran down the road
back to his father’s farm when he realized the time.
Dust rose each place his foot fell,
leaving a trace of him
long after he’d gone.
April 1935