Across the fields, the new folks lick their lips.
They’re moving in to escape cities. To invest in deals
and futures. To devour the land’s ragged canvas
of blackberry bushes and cow ponds, crushed snapping turtles
dotting our red clay roads. To make a new world
plain as a motel painting. As mysterious as beige.
~
A line of shortleaf pine separates my mother’s fields
from neighbors who bring her fresh tomatoes
all summer, who smile and ask how she’s doing
before asking how much she wants for the land
before driving off in some truck too big to fit down her drive.
She calls and bitches about every smug face
while eating something heirloomed and juicy,
while telling me her mailbox has been smashed
again into the ghost of fence line
overrun by sticker bushes, multiflora roses.