Listening To A White Man Play The Blues

Pushing the seed into the ground
isn’t enough. Whatever blooms

in this place is dumb and blind.
Foreclosure is a one-eyed man.

Nothing falls from a sky like this
except a little rain, never enough rain.

All night my wife looks down
the neck of my guitar

passing the bottle back and forth
like a story she’s been telling for years.

So many baskets of hard bread.
You take the shovel to the ground.

The land stares back at you.
The corn drifts towards the sky.

You don’t know what dirt is
until you bury your first daughter.