I am not a city boy.

I do not need proximity to the chattering swarms,

the sea of foul-tempered elbows

late to their pigeon holes.

I do not need concrete building blocks to prop myself against,

that serve no purpose

other than

to remind me of my place.

I do not long for the lurching buses

and black-stacked lorries

coughing pale death

down the shattered roads.

I do not desire 57 channels and nothing on.

I need the tree-spired horizon

buttoning wild skies of beetling snake-tongued clouds

to undulating golden oceans.

I desire ear-splitting silence

and a kitchen-cut sandwich

with thumbprints mashed into

its spongy surface

on a forgotten wayside

on a forgotten lane to nowhere

in the shadow of a prairie shipwreck's

hay-dripping spanners.

From here

the land receives

Day's slow blink

without trepidation.