Driving Oklahoma Is Rarely Met with Much Excitement

by TRAVIS TRUAX

but some of us know a distant storm
means the creeks will soon boom with song.
And we smile, knowing this wide sky
isn’t empty, turning our tallied miles
into stories—each one a different myth.
One we call scissortail, for its streaming feathers,
its tale of division and grief: how a body can both
split and stay behind. Driving these roads,
we love the prairies. We love the underpasses
putting distance in a frame. And we love the way
the sky talks about tomorrow with the clouds,
how the calm swarms of starlings pass by:
a thousand dots, black against blue, a flock
of quickened hearts spilling in the open space
above the cattle.