Free Matinee tickets
We listen from black vinyl bucket seats
Atop a puttering tractor.
Standing hay sighs slowly in the breeze.
Grasshoppers flick in the dry stems.
Hidden crickets raise an alarm
And grind into a higher gear
To match the tractor’s engine.
Cicadas in their perches
Count the rising temperature
With anxious screeches.
Gravel groans beneath hooves, tires, feet
And the cow’s tail swipes and slaps at gnats.
Oaks creak and stretch in the wind,
Their scorched leaves lazily clap.
An ember sunset sweeps for miles
inking Oklahoma orange
seeping into rough red dirt.
I know no greater glitter
than the sun sparkles in tassels
of a field full of corn.
A wide West sky blushes,
blooms flame, flinging phoenix fire
across the dome of the dying day.
Dusk descends with dewy exhale.
Evening velvets into vagaries
of lingering liminal light.
Speckled stars scintillate
in the winking windows of heaven
shuddering disbelief at their distant beauty.
The sickle-sharp moon
soothes the sea of grasses
into blue oblivion.
Wind washes the world awake
and signals the sparrow to sing
the first-light fanfare
of phoenix flight to life.
— By Miss Cellanea 