The Populace, What Matters Most

Superlative copses
leftovers
 of the old meander
tangles piled crimson
now used
by stubble-colored hawks
of hawk-colored ditches
 bark-colored bark
who swoop super flat
parallel to the exhaust
the constant math
of  I-5 thermals


feathers fat.
Old farmhouses
sink into the noise
of truck traffic.

Tree farms
their identical voters
 vote for the mountains
the remembered direction
of volcanic slopes.