Snow geese migrate in thousands,

their white-breasted bodies rest

in the rice paddies around us.


They are headed to Vermillion Parish,

or Monclova, Mexico or maybe the Gulf,

where they will swim in the exotic scraps

and the rich fatty trash of Coca-Cola, King Cake,

of candies and mole, tossed aside Powerball tickets.


But here, in Trumann, Arkansas

everything is littered

with the beautiful, filthy cotton

fields, the gins clicking

like metronomes.


In the Pacific, two thousand

of these birds dropped dead

out of the sky from Cholera.


The only sincere double-billboard

on the highway passes, Rick’s Sweetheart

Special: Two sirloin steaks, $19.99

and the other sign underneath

We too are about to meet God.


And then, today, thirty miles west,

In Jonesboro, the other light show—

a Gadsen Flag wrapped around a 12-gauge throat,

demanding we hear his voice

over the dipping sun that turns

the white of the paddy geese gold.