We Must Be Close

We’re on Route 58, heading to Wilson.

A life-sized Sacred Heart of Jesus statue

Sits right along this road. It should be just

Ahead and on the right. I know it’s past

A straight-away, perhaps around this curve.

We’ve pass through Maysville, Trenton, Kinston: towns

With plywood patches on Main Street, where thrift

And junk are sold in decommissioned churches

And trim and turret sag along the roof lines.

I feel like it is near. We must be close.

Between the towns, tobacco barns are leaning

A little more, another year of weather

Having applied its pressure. Tin and time

And tractors wear more vines. A burned-out trailer

Deteriorates behind a double-wide.

We travel on, and on the left I spy

The Virgin Mary standing in a bird bath,

A make-shift grotto, garden in the rough.

Then there’s a house with six or seven washing

Machines out front, each broken one set out,

And finally, the statue, hands out wide,

Its painted concrete face, peeling and chipped.

I wonder at these towns, these fields, our lives—

Our flawed attempts to keep it all in check, to

Open our arms and stand up in the rough.