With My Redneck Sons in Southern Indiana

The pampas of America begin
north of our barn. Glaciers smoothed down the earth
for buffalo and corn, but I live in
the poor south hills where farmland isn’t worth
the taxes, and the KKK comes out
of the wet Gothic woods. Our humpbacked barn
is rusty in the patient twilight. Scouting
the Blue River bendable as yarn
or glowworms, I am not quite Baptist red-
neck like my sons who often paddle through
the bluffs. But in a barn I placed a bed
and desk and dreamt the world. Gone from the coast,
I camp on hills of vanished Indians a few
calm nights and hear trees talk. I’m still a ghost.