Yorkshire Iowa

Where are the cliffs?
Heather to escape mold
moss covered stones,
burning skin where gold
grass stroked. Reading
on the heights.
Walking while thinking
in the woods, where a bird
sings shackles away. Always
clouds that promise rain
clinging as close as a lover.
Where are the cliffs, the wood
and the heather? There is nothing
here but corn, and dust.
Dark shadows in the trees
down the face of a crag
like white skin, flickering
with dew when the sun rose,
not east but west now
falling on these heights.
Clouds come anew.
The flicker is lost, an errant
thought gone, but the bird
sings again. Only it’s a crow
not a moorhen in the bean field
across the road perched
on a tire that says
No Hunting in faded
white paint.