Courtesy of Anthony Rosset/Unsplash.
It is always some northern state.
Michigan. Minnesota. A road, two lanes,
in a soft twilight. Tame woods
on either side, railroad tracks
that run parallel, and a house,
looming into the aerial camera’s eye,
turning, now, on the table
of its own clearing—
The people, standing outside.
The dog beside them,
tight on its leash. The one
police car, red light revolving,
and somebody pointing,
into the trees—
And the camera tilts, then,
and turns like a ball in water,
first to the tall, dusky grass; then
upward and out, back to the road,
onto the black seams in between
plots and fields; little lights
on the lake’s near shore;
already, faintly, two or three stars—
I was thinking about the country,
how it tends to look, onscreen,
when we record our lonelinesses.
The people. The air. The dog’s
infinite goodness. The midsummer light,
blue, the house benign, perfect—
a vase of flowers, daisies,
seen in a window; then the small sign
marking the county line, and again
the pan, of the woods—
But there’s the woman, crying now.
Her hand half across her mouth,
the dog gazing up at her,
the too-bright light in her face.