RAINE REFLECTIONS
© Christopher Raine
Divided Lanes
Tall grass wilts
with lingering regrets
ambering beneath
a lemon sun
cars buzz on
like angry wasps
against the wind
a background
of chattering locust legs
click in clattering song
while asphalt heat shimmers
against a clear blue sky
She’s late again
Leaning against
the trunk of an old beater
he takes off his hat
wipes his brow
rubs his weathered neck
kicks at loose pebbles
scuffing them over
the roadside shoulder
they fall like rain
over a corrugated culvert
that coughs of dust
dead cattails sigh
in a choir of yesterdays
days that were meant
to be different