A few miles past that fucked-up intersection
coming off of the Chicago Skyway –
the toll booth, the gaping hole in the road,
the circle left and then allemand right
demanded by some depraved square dance caller –
I-65 shakes off the big city
and, like any good Midwesterner
makes a good and straight line
through the flat Indiana fields
to civilization.
The sky turns purple
and then black while I drive
through questions without answers
until I am ambushed by
an alien invasion of synchronized red blinking lights,
thousands upon thousands of sentinels in orderly rows,
pinning down the windswept fields,
just waiting for the word.
But there is no call to arms, only
windmills churning wind into watts
in the unending night sky,
a sky that’s
at last
as dark as it’s ever going to be.
Halfway North 