I Know What This Looks Like

an empty stretch of asphalt

like a million miles

of federal highway

nice shoulder, wide lanes

curving through pines

tall enough to reach

the sky, with occasional willows

and great tangled stands

of oaks leaning out over the road

some farmer’s field

head high with ten

thousand rows of corn

I have driven past

this sort of place

and its kind

for over fifty years

but to me, this place

is not an empty road

this is home

as you fly past

somewhere north

of a mile-a-minute,

I turn onto the gravel drive

between the pines.