If you live in poverty, are you poor?

 

If you live in poverty, are you poor?

On bicycle we’re helmeted for safety
where wild turkeys scatter.
We’re not lost, simply astray
on dirt roads among skeletal tractors,
barns with backs broken, fenceposts fallen,
barbwire in fiddlehead coils.
Forest once cleared, fights back.

Except here — wild roses line the road.
A chimney puffs smoke,
a shack sheds shingles.
In piles of sawdust guarded by chickens,
chainsaw dinosaurs roam
possibly for sale, who knows?
An old woman gathers ditch weeds
for a roadkill salad, humming.
Can’t catch her eye.
Children picking berries stare,
wave purple fingers, smile.

Stacking firewood, an old man frowns,
stays distant but points down the road,
then points left, wiggles his hand as if
snaking among curves, points right—
then waves. He knows
where we belong.

…..

First published in San Pedro River Review
photo by Mabel Amber