Universal Summer Blue

tires bumping and dust rising
we rattle past fields of unkind soil
along a dirt-forgotten road

the ethereal sky
sings out its universal summer blue
and rolling hills (which I, in ignorance,
call mountains)
bid us round the bend

a lopsided road sign bears witness to
Dunsville, Pop. 207,
where a string of injured houses
lurch hopefully towards the road

we hurl past
a weary paint-chipped barn
the carcasses of two corroded cars
abandoned in the yard

a boarded up schoolhouse
its yard of laughter silenced
flashes by

a young girl in an oversized pastel dress,
squeezing a smile from her pinched face,
hangs from the fence

her scrawny arms protrude from cartoon sleeves
faded, shoeless,
she waits

~ Melodie Corrigall

Rumplestiltskin