There is a Cross

Shawn Kent via Compfight

If Des Moines (my state capital) is fly-over country, then I live in a section of that neglected land that slides by even further out of sight. And so it was that a mostly forgotten roadside shrine on a dirt road to a town that died 100 years ago got me thinking about all of the lives and stories and changes that have created the landscape around me.

There is a Cross

in the ditch of a dusty
county road that
leads to nowhere
but a town whose bones
have been picked nearly clean.
In a shaft of sunlight
over that quiet road,
late-summer midges
rise and dive, just as
they always have.
Plastic flowers long faded –
a name flakes
off the weathered wood.
Last crickets gather in
the dusk, in its shadow.

– Steve Peterson