Labor Day
To my surprise, the boss tells me I can have the whole weekend off.
I elect to drive home to see family – seventy miles north. Little traffic, mainly farmland, some modest towns, a small lake or two.
I drive with windows down, a slack late-season feel in the muted air; a laggard sense of things flowing Elsewhere.
Back at school, my friends are partying.
The moon rides shotgun, thin sickle blade tilted just above the dark tree line in the west.
autumn cottonfield
halfway up a row
an empty tractor
* Roger Jones says “I teach at Texas State University and am poetry editor of
the Texas Review. I've published haibun in Contemporary Haibun Online,
Lynx, Frogpond, Modern Haiku and Haibun Today.
