Despite my fervent desire to leave Ohio, someone once told me I would become one of those sentimental assholes who romanticizes the state anyway and encapsulates it into an unjustifiably beautiful picture.

…..Nah.

In Autumn, On The Way

Foot taps gas,
calf muscle contracts,
and eyes squint toward
the bright sun of a Saturday morning:
perpetual inhabitant of a transient space.

The crows along state route 13
milemark the way home,
white tails flush into the woods from the open road -
silos pregnant with farmers’ gold
dot my peripherals in the distance.

Machine of modern technology
rides swift and close past the eighteen-wheeler
on its way to somewhere, past the great American combine,
the Amish horse stamping at the crossroads:
back a silver of sweat,
mouth full of steam.

Through the walls of green silk mazes
and into the hotel-strewn highway of
tourists and lake vistas,
speedometer a wild metronome -
dust on the dash flies up over
old railroad ties and grits the windows.