(excerpted from The Tenderness of Memory, Plain View Press, 1994 with permission of the author)

Sure, the leaves turn
and skim the wind
blue skiffs or butterflies,
and the old Rock River twists
its green locks past
Black Hawk's concrete ghost
that hovers like a lone sequoia
on a bluff near Castle Rock,
but you can't think too much
about the scenery here:
Route 2 is dangerous
No passing all the way.
Besides, I'm looking to buy
a good horse, so
my mind's on the road
and the little red mare.

Yet scanning a thicket on the right,
leafless near the top
where the trees point and waver,
I catch an eagle
in my rearview mirror.
I can see its white head,
its shoulders tapering
finer than a hawk's.
Then the guy in back of me honks,
and my eyes shift to his lips
pecking curses into the windshield.
On the left, towers chew
their smoky cud above
a pasture of black and white cows.