Alabama Summer

Brandon Crosby

Dirt road slowing to the lane

Across the bridge sounds pitch among the live oak.

Sunlight glints around rusty splotches of the beaten-tin roof of the huge house.

At the barn, stacked high

Golden dried leaves poke through the croker sheets of the sheeted tobacco.

The backyard swirls with mosquitoes and beetles and the throb of frogs from the river.

The smell of dry tobacco, cooking in the barn beyond the oak, scuds high in the star-spun sky.