Pine and fir

You know it's getting warmer
when the flies are pasted to the hood of the car,
not dead but alive in a miniature swarm,
as they pick apart whatever there was previously pasted.
Heated air rises around them invisibly,
55 degrees or so, feels like 90.

Passed the ranches lined with pine and fir,
an arboreal gateway into those mountain-farms,
the same way the students now line
the circular concrete arche-structures on campus,
here and there and on every splotch of grass
like they were scooped up by some divine claw
and scattered about to just listen and write and read
in a deaf world that is shut out by more than just myself.

Drove to Will's Pit Stop, and the boy in front of me in line,
with the out-of-state driver's license, purchased some snuff and soda.
I too purchased soda, two bottles, green and stifling:
like two plastic syringes, little twenty-ounce oral injections
to satiate my hourly caffeine addiction.

Closed the car door and kicked the snow black.
Smeared it across the asphalt;
wished it were now summer and those small streaks
would evaporate within mere seconds
of being exposed to the suffocating sunshine.

Walked above the agricultural tennis courts,
peering down on them as miniature fields of turf and clay,
rectangular like farmlands from the sky.
They were below me. Everything rectangular below me.

Saw the breadbox obscuring the skyline,
lit up as best a starry earthbound building could,
trying mightily to overcome the radiance above,
with success in appearance but failure in actuality.
Though I hoped otherwise, hoped to memorize
and remember again that companionship
I now only find in books and occasional glimpses.

It's all I can do to keep walking, to keep not talking.
This world--
it's never without sound.
And it's comforting.