Advection Blues

The mower alone

saw from the median

the cloud come over

the mountain down to trawl

the valley like a whale

and the swifts like water

passing through her white baleen.

The mower alone patrolling

the haw with the hawks

saw from the median

the cloud come over

the mountain to swallow

where the sky had been

and where the town had been

pinned by steeples

and hummed electric hubris.

For everyone else

on either side of the narrow

the cloud was only a minute

of a single verse

because the highway treats the blues

as all the same as if Bentonia

were Sunflower County

but the land between the lanes

even while under the blades

sees the power in every cloud

and hears each song spiral out

of an old familiar tune just so

to devour our hearts.