Dubuque Street

     The red sun rose quickly over the two lane and the road was smooth. The first thousand bikes rolled away from Charles City and the chorus of "Good mornings" from rider to rider was accompanied by the songs of frogs along the culvert.

      The living room was long and moved like the first base line moves in the first games in the mirage of summer heat.
   The long space between the living room windows and the kitchen sink  was interrupted by a pool table.  The green felt of the table drew my attention. I hadn’t seen Matthew in nineteen years. I didn’t ask why a pool table stood at the front door.

    The short, stout blond with the crewcut tapered close at his small ears smiled as if a beam of fire. His deep, bass voice crackled like an adolsecent. He stuttered.
     “Me gonna get a driver’s license then a car,” he said as he raised his right arm away from his body and inclined it with a bend as if he were driving. He imagined his girlfriend was seated by his side.

When the rain fell in sheets and veils
When spring covered the tracks
The rails screamed of trains
Time has no change
Take it back.

A sparrow sang inside the bubble
Of  atoms that Blackhawk breathed
And the waves on the Mississippi
Smiled in their arcs to the gulf
Take me back to the horse.

Snow fell like dandruff
From the head of the northern spirit
The laughter of the frogs
Filled spring eddies
The door to wonder of tadpole climbs
Upon shore lines for first breaths

       Many voices cross Iowa on the way to the coast, along the path to political empowerment, on the road to revelation and in the journey of the spirit. Some of them are genuine at their beginnings, like Borlauf’s. Some become genuine over time, as evidenced by Smith and his troup of Mormons in their crossing of our prairie.