Flyover Country 

From thirty thousand feet at night the glow 
of city lights from DC to Boston confounds. 
If each light represented only one person, 
the numbers would astound. Pack too many 
rats in a cage and they fight, kill, and eat 
each other. How do people thrive, jammed 
together like that? Why don't they go crazy? 
Violent? Perhaps that’s why the evening news 
in those cities is so messy. 

I’d rather look down at flyover country, 
the braided North Platte, emerald green 
alfalfa circles, towns with grain elevators 
along the railroad, a thin road to an airstrip 
two miles out of town, ranches miles apart, 
a field half light, half dark, a tractor pulling 
the dark thread. Cattle gathered around 
a stock tank in a windmill’s shadow. 
The fruitful work of man in nature.