Habitation

The long road south, the pavement flat

and black as a dash without end, no signs,

no houses, the heat like an unseen fog

and the sun a swollen crimson clot

above fields where frazzle-haired palm trees rose

sporadic and unwieldy, the miles

of pasture where cattle of every conceivable

color, rust and tobacco and ashen, fed

and nursed their stumbling young,

heavy heads bent to the ground.

And insects that crashed against windshield

so tiny, no body was left behind.

Then a wooden shack where we stopped to pee   

and the shock of iron-red flecks against

bowl, the water placid, unmoved.

There was hardly any pain.

What could we do but continue on

as scattered street-lamps gradually revealed

a landscape inhabited once again: the still   

shuttered windows of bungalows pink

as scrubbed flesh, the small dark yards of abandoned

Bigwheels and plots of petunias or cukes,

the closed, expectant mailboxes

and the living already dead inside me.