A bird calls, a bird answers, as someone drives away from the campground

which here in Nebraska, always smells like a state fair with their corn cows sheep and swine, tractor pull, dirt bike, rough bulls  the young rodeos hopeful to land a buck, swearing with the exertion of youth, the animal eyes brimming, palms longing for a prize.

The road has been long, and tiresome, on vacation in the place your ancestors left, choked with dust, to  build a new life, greener pastures. You wake entwined with their love

a flightless lightning bug  caught inside your orange tent flaps her wings desperately hoping for release which you do, you let her out unzipping.

Relentlessly the dam sounds in the background ringed by evergreens.  You’ve imagined yourself to be the pinecone stuck there roiling beneath oncoming waves

the vertigo.

How can I make sense of it: this world ever younger redone again and again, remaking  itself the spring of that sixteen-freedom Mellencamp warns to hold onto a greased pig in the chase, squealing  and still alive.

Yet here  You are.

Approaching summer. This July already in the belly of the basket  of plucked fruit.

Already it’s the summer of your life - so tell me

when will you rest your feet dip your head in a cold stream, with  abandon, and  begin dreaming?