if you are belly up in a single engine plane in a seat you won
in a frostbitten coin toss and it’s february the worst month
and iowa farmland though still as indifferent to you
is now bricklaid frozen and where you’re headed
this should be it and my daughter born sixty years after
they picked you out of the wire fence at the edge of the cornfield
should not be able to scream for you in any front rows
as though something from the cornfield is there
miming peggy sue in animated light
Header photograph © Karin Hedetniemi.