The sun is setting on a sticky July eve
like a pad of butter slides down an
ear of sweet corn, seemingly slow
but suddenly…plops.
You can see the colors painted
in the sky as if a young girl obsessed
with ponies, princesses, and cotton candy
chose the colors herself.
The final whistle of the community pool
has blown, signaling that yet another
dog day of summer has concluded. Children
with their fingers and toes as wrinkly as a
California raisin race home to see what
their moms made for dinner.
You see that setting sun among its canvas
of pastels, although shielded by 200 year-old
Oak trees, a water tower, and the tallest
“building” in town, a grain storage siloh.
It’s too pretty to pass up a better look,
You drive west to get out of town and
into the nothingness that is assumed about
the countryside.
But that wiley sun is too fast for you.
Between the crowds racing home
after community league baseball, the children
pedaling their legs to exhaustion,
and that darn singular stoplight,
it’s gone.
