Stars and Crickets

Why don't you come on out
to my place, baby?
Let me give you the guided tour.

Just take Old 40
five miles or so,

out past the signal-light
and Dewey's Auto Salvage,

'round Ms. Johnsons' Hairpin
and over the Princeton Wall,

through the Snake
and across Lonely Boy Bridge,

Hang a left at the old man
sitting in the broken-down truck
by the side of the road.

Go ahead and wave,
that's why he's there.

And when you come to the crossing
of Old 97 and Phantom 409, stop the car.

Put an empty long-neck bottle
in the middle of the cross-roads
(the spirits seem to favor Lone Star
or PBR, but any brand will probably do).

Go on and give it a spin
(and be sure to put some hip into it).

Which-ever way it points
is where I'll be —

waiting for you
to come on out
to my place, baby.

You bring the wine
in a brown paper bag
and I'll bring the whole night sky
on a flat-bed truck
and we'll drink and howl
and sing shining phrases
in praise of things
near and far —

things that click and chirp
and zoom and glitter,
right under our noses
or a zillion miles away,
it's all the same out here.

So come on out
to my place baby,

I got everything a girl
like you could ever need.

I may not have
no fancy car or a hundred
Brooks Brothers suits or even
a single pair of Italian leather shoes,

but, I got
an ocean of whispering wheat,
time-releasing all its secrets
in strange and mysterious frequencies,

I got long-gone-lonesome train-songs
always comin' in from somewhere across
the way,

and,
I got galaxies
of stars and crickets, baby,

stars and crickets.



*Jason Ryberg is the author of seven books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, several angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. His latest collection of poems is Down, Down and Away (co-authored with Josh Rizer and released by Spartan Press).  He lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Feel free to look up his skirt at jasonryberg.blogspot.com