Roadside

Dying highways
are grey gouges in the landscape, frozen
furrows cut through brittle November cornstalks
and fields of autumn-shocked grasses. Exposed,
out here, the wind swallows all sound,
hardly hindered by isolated spikes of trees with
limbs like bent nails. It blows constant, swells
with empty roaring, slaps at my face,
at brown barn-planks and cedar rails.

The cold sting lingers. I miss
the closed comfort of concrete, of brick and stone
warmed by the breath of a thousand exhalations
where buildings channel voices
and noises are funneled between high-rises, flowing
into warm rivers over sidewalks which have absorbed
the dust of infinite strides, rushing
toward lighted windows of cluttered cafes
where conversation germinates.