On a dark road cut between soybean fields, I pass an ark raised on a hill beside a farmhouse with a blue light in its attic. South of Redkey, a palomino gallops in circles beneath a buck moon. I have worn the eye patch of the lecher and believed the legends corn stalks susurrate while Indiana fog rolls across desire. Road signs warn of wild boars crossing the highway toward a vandal’s jubilee. It is a land where every lesson is learned through lightning strike and thunder. I spent my orphan years as a cyclops, a stork that bowed to its captor, a bird with a death rattle song. I have survived locusts and tequila. Impersonated the chorus of a lullaby and forgotten how to drink pure water. Vultures nest in the rafters of one-room schoolhouses, and the abandoned churches of Dwindle thistle and bane. In this crucible, I have capered and stalked in the skin of a black puma and fled from bloodhounds into the loblolly during a fool’s rain. I followed foot  sign pressed into the high ground where the tall grass was trampled. The hieroglyphs of she-chucks, pregnant does, red vixens. Tonight, I cruise the long stretch between Riddle and Antiville, taking the long way home once more. Past neglected Civil War graves and flickers of fireflies. Through crossroads where I hold my breath to ward against the inveiglements of the gold-teeth man in the white suit. Heading east to where storm clouds roil behind colors that bleed into one.