the end of summer, blackberry poetry

Driving through the countryside
In the heart of America
Where fields glisten gold
Rolling on and on and up into the darkening sky
Then pause for the pocket of trees
Where farmsteads lie, generations in the making
Clapboard houses, greying from years of snow and sun
Or newer versions, someone's son who went and built himself a mini-mansion, next to the greying houses, now tumbled over with weeds, forgotten
Then rolling fields again, on and on
Cars speed along over the dark pavement
Leap frogging each other, in a race to get home
Pausing in their scramble for a combine, driven by a tanned teenager, cursing at city-working drivers, blowing dust as they fly by
Passing old, cheaply-built bars, pickups out front, neon signs for Budweiser, and a billboard advertising a turkey shoot next weekend
Goldenrod, Queen Annes Lace, and the perky blue sailors filling up the ditches
Here and there a flash of closely tended flower beds, a farmwife's treasure, framed by a perfectly mown lawn, in diagonal patterns
The spire of a country church rising up from the golden corn
Oh, the generations of ham bakes and pancake breakfasts!
The air is thick with end of August humidity
It hangs on the trees, the blackberry patches, the ponds filled with duckweed and cattails
Reds and yellows now tint the edges of far off woods, pockets of shade behind the rolling hills of crops
The tassels of corn, swaying in the wind, now a field of low green soy
Back and forth the crops trade along the road
And then off to the right or left, a side road, only sometimes paved, leading down to yet another farm yard where more tended, prized flower beds are framed by more perfectly mown lawns
The richly pungent smell of cow and dust and mown hay
Billowing clouds on the horizon, a storm building up energy in the lazy humid sky
And all this hits me
Windows down, hair blowing, heat soaking into my bones
As home