Citizen Poet

The black-mirrored highway deflected the moon

     and shimmered in the fog,

     blending with rainbow-wreathed headlights

     when rare they came.

On the night-swept asphalt where I had hitched since noon

     I shivered in the fog

     damp and bloated with the smell of peanuts

     in a nutty domain.

Farm after farm, field after field, on and on and on

     Musk-sodden in the fog,

     air sucking nights and salt-sweating days,

     hot sun and summer rain.

In South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama,

     Florida and Virginia, too, the smell of peanuts

     is everywhere—in your pants and shirts and shoes,

     and even your hair.

It’s the smell of the chain-gang on country roads

     when peanut pegs and gypsum are tossed

     by Jim Dandy bush axes and peanuts

     are stuffed into brown, A-grade trousers

     to eat along the way.

It’s the smell of Cracker Jacks and prizes and picking

     roasted nuts out of the corn at a long-ago circus

     with a sawdust midway and a girl with golden hair

     in a blue sweater.

It’s the smell of Bayfront Park and hungry pigeons,

     New York and pushcarts and ballgames

     and a maiden in Lynn Haven who boiled the peanuts

     until purple they came.

They say a peanut can pollinate itself. Well, now there’s

     a thought that’ll play on your mind awhile.

     Self-pollination. Damn. Something the hell else to think about

     when smelling peanuts.

Ambulance speeding in the night,

Red cock hat spinning, flashing white,

blinking red, lights

aglow,

Zigzagging through scrambled cars, where

do you go?

Do you answer a plaintive call for help,

Crying in the crashing of steel

and the frantic squeal

of brakes?

Or do you bear a body oozing its soul

in your wake?

Ambulance speeding in the night,

Seeking an unsuspecting body

succumbed to bloody

destiny,

Will you someday come screaming, screaming

after me?