I drove east along County Road 16

At six a.m., the red barns and fields 

Bursting with life. But they’d been

Sold and soon would be no more.

I’d been awake all night with my class

In the junior high caf to prevent funerals

That came anyway. Slapping my face

To stay awake, I lost my AM signal then 

Left of the dial caught Bob Seger humming

A song about humming a song from 1962.

I rolled down my window. In that moment

My night moved, and my day—

The one just finished and the day already beginning—

They moved too as I breathed in those barns

And fields. My eyes watered—from the wind, 

That was it. The hilltops glowed in the early light. 

Thirty-five years later, it’s all long gone.

The old farms have been plowed under. Yet 

I still drive that road every day, going

Home to a place that never has moved away.