Prodigal

You could drive out of this country and attack the world with your ambition, invent wonder plasmas, become an artist of the provocative gesture, the suggestive nod, you could leave wanting the world and return carrying it, a noisy bundle of steam and libido, a ball of fire balanced on your tongue, you might reclaim Main Street in a limo longer than a sermon, wave at our red faces while remembering that you were born a clod hopper, a farmer’s kid, and get over that hump once and for all by telling A Great Man’s stories— the dirty jokes of dictators, tidbits of presidential hygiene, insights into the psychotropic qualities of power and the American tradition of kissing moneyed ass. Your uncle would still call you Roy Boy, pheasants sun themselves beside the tracks, waiting for the dew to burn off before their first flight, and corn grow so high that if you stood in the field you’d disappear, the fact aiming your eyes down the road.