Yellow buds blooming soon

Woven with grass not dried yet

Resting like a midwestern penguin

Surrounded by first world soy beans

Taxed in rows, how much

Gasoline will burn the barn down

To make it to the county line?

Despite the commercials—

Local love, pigskin is used for cooking

A blue heron, resting too

In brown water from another

Million miles of mud

Leave and return, the sun will glow still

awakened by wind

Sounds of water

Flowers reach trees

No ground ivy left

To hold them

*originally published in Southern Champaign County Today (2025)