Crows and the Blue Star Cowboys

My direction,
concrete north towards Capital City
then due west
on the old Kings Highway,

my wheels joining a rhythmic symphony
on the long causeway
that stretches for miles
over once fertile wetlands,

then down road 32
past billboards for Jesus
and the old roadside fruit stand
empty for years,

where crows and the blue star cowboys
left orchards of nut trees and black oak
picked clean, bare trees now in winter
evergreen no more,

towards golden hills
that watch grand white clouds
with grey bellies swollen with rain
on their way to somewhere else,

to the end of West Texas street near Cherry Glen road
and an adobe brown house with a broken screen door
in a place they used to call
Prospect.

Every truck stop
from Dixon to Travis,
every road
from Davis to Woodland,

I'm committing it all
to memory
on the road
between me and you.


Ken Owen  Van Niddy Press   February 2014