Halfway through Illinois on the radio
they are giving away jackpots.
I can hear them squeal as they win.
Luck in this landscape lies flat
as if to enter the ground and add to it as well.
You can see its traces, milkweed caught in the fences,
the sheen on the new grass
that could be sunshine or white paint.
But the brushstroke is visible.
We wouldn’t believe anything we saw without it—

the brown, the green, the rectangle, the overpass.
I believe now that sorrow
is our presence in this by default.
In a little while I hope there will be shadows,
the houses and these trees trying to bury half of themselves.
This could be your lucky day,
the day the roof is put on the house,
and the willows once again resemble trees,
and the bridge falls in, making the river once again
sufficiently hard to cross.