- Mar 23
- 1 min read
Another Gas StationGoing Up Where Oaks Had Sheltered Squirrels and Crows
There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places.
—Wendell Berry
If I were ever to move, it would be even farther
from town than my twenty-five minute drive,
farther from fast food and four-lane traffic,
clear cuts boasting for-sale signs jarring as sirens:
87 Lots Available in Hickory Ridge, BUY NOW!—
the hickories chainsawed into oblivion.
I’d live ten miles down a dusty dirt road,
the only ads from fireflies blinking neon gold,
from katydids’ summer surround-sound cries for mates.
To visit me would be effort, an act of regard.
If I knew you were coming, I’d try to remember
to put on clothes. Otherwise, you’d find me
lying naked in a field of wild white clover,
bees brushing my nipples in search of pollen,
or in my garden tying up tomatoes, mulching
the asparagus, tossing overgrown cukes to the dogs.
An old woman who’s forgotten how to talk
but still knows how to laugh, grateful for the cookies,
the bag of brown rice, but handing back the stack
of Newsweek and People you brought, because
you thought I might be losing touch with the world.
PAM BAGGETT is the author of Wild Horses (Main Street Rag, 2018), which received an honorable mention for the Brockman-Campbell Award. Other awards include an Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant and a 2019-20 Fellowship in Literature from the North Carolina Arts Council. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, New Ohio Review, Salt, The Southern Review, and Tar River Poetry.