Samuel Dickerson

Come Sundown We’ll Be Together, We Don’t Have a Choice

The corn is too tall now
to see the cars
when I turn on these two-
lane roads. The corn is too
            tall to see clear
                        across these once empty
            fields. Summer must be the opposite
            of vacancy. I’m driving again
to see my friends
                        in another town and all around
the spaces close with growth
I can feel the warmth of. The only open
is the road in the evening
                        between towns where the trees
and corn and wheat and painted lines can find
home. The corn is too tall
now to see anything
            except corn, except green
stalks and uneven leaves, but I catch
glimpses of distance on the jagged horizon
                        I brush through. I peel
the husks and breathe the sweetness and take
            a raw bite
                        of what everything becomes.

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Samuel Dickerson is a Best of the Net Award Nominee and has poems published or forthcoming in swamp pink and Harpur Palate. He is currently in the MFA Program at the University of Northern Michigan and he served as poetry editor for The Scarab.