The lack of trees
makes no provision for the wind.
It speaks with one voice here:
moans across the prairie,
weathering slate on farm roofs.

Through the windshield,
I feel the smallness of farm lights
set in the vast black onyx of plains,
the lone communication towers blinking
red radio light into the dark,
gully bridges gripping the land together.

I click on the car radio.
Chicago is still blowing jazz
this late into the night.
Listening to Miles’ muted trumpet,
I think he must be up with me,
letting the wind blow itself out through his horn.

Even this late, tower beams
carry across the fields of stubble,
the slow rising and setting of the land.
But by morning, their lights blink off
and I see the steel embedded in prairie soil.
Jazz fades to static, the spit emptied from the horn.

Outside the car, the outline
of a silo, a farmhouse appear
across the plains, cemented there.
Tractors pull out from rows of stubble.
A few miles further on, another road
where they turn off.

I feel the roots that anchor them.
Maybe if I go past the speed limit,
I can outdistance the next night,
the next radio towers,
the wind.