Sunlight sang across the ditch water. I remembered the polished turning of plowed ground near Dyersburg, the light-edged scales of a moccasin sunning on a cypress log in the Combahee, the pale eagle rising in the moon's face. Wind through the car window laughed at me. I called my mother to see. She took a mop handle and smashed the birds into piles of ash.
Dusk settles in roadside ditches.
A calf bawls from the hedge. Two horses on a gallop lean and turn sharply together at the fence. The willow-fringed river to the south wraps about the bluffs like a shawl. These country towns are nice. Dog barks echo over muffled houses.