Flyin’ Country

Didn’t want to come to this hole,

but did want to see you again,

in boots, happy.

This long, long weekend goes

slow when it’s just you and I

and thirty thousand plaid backs

bobbin’ and stompin’, singing,

stewing the grass into mud

kicked up our faded blue calves.

Guitars drift along drumbeats

over our heads, dragging the first lyrics

you sent me, before it all happened

as it happened.

We’re exposed in slivers

in the crowd, as Blake Shelton’s

trollin’ for souls. Tebey’s trollin’

for Toby, Ruttan, Rhett and whisky.

Whitney Rose, Autumn Hill,

Underwood, Hicks, Kicks and

Brooks, Farr gone along Emerson

Drive. Johnny Cash walks the Florida-

Georgia Line, Smith’s in Dallas,

Stellas, and Kira Isabella. Kacey,

Mackenzie, Paul, and Porter.

Pretty Girl, I say, take me to Church

and let me see you shake it for Jason

Aldean, Flatts, Ford, Bentley and Lambert,

Luke Bryan, Lee Brice, Brett, Blaine, Brant,

Bradley, and Bradbury, while Bamford

begs for One More Girl to end them all.

You wanted Sam Hunt, but Hunter

Hayes takes rain in the form of ice

to the eye, and I’m so grateful

it sends us to our tent

to pocket out the storm,

side by side in sleeping bags.

We play crib without the baby

and our hearts split as they

mend. Here comes the sun,

scorched again, shoulder to shoulder

we listen to our lives hummed out

on stage, and you won’t go on

the Ferris Wheel, I assume,

because it’s too romantic

and we’re just friends now.

Still look at us! Willing to do

the real love that comes after

we’ve let each other go.

This work is deliberate.

No travesty of chance

has laid us out.


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