Snow geese migrate in thousands,
their white-breasted bodies rest
in the rice paddies around us.
They are headed to Vermillion Parish,
or Monclova, Mexico or maybe the Gulf,
where they will swim in the exotic scraps
and the rich fatty trash of Coca-Cola, King Cake,
of candies and mole, tossed aside Powerball tickets.
But here, in Trumann, Arkansas
everything is littered
with the beautiful, filthy cotton
fields, the gins clicking
like metronomes.
In the Pacific, two thousand
of these birds dropped dead
out of the sky from Cholera.
The only sincere double-billboard
on the highway passes, Rick’s Sweetheart
Special: Two sirloin steaks, $19.99
and the other sign underneath
We too are about to meet God.
And then, today, thirty miles west,
In Jonesboro, the other light show—
a Gadsen Flag wrapped around a 12-gauge throat,
demanding we hear his voice
over the dipping sun that turns
the white of the paddy geese gold.