Missing Dakota

At every tight corner a cluster of signs put up by an insurance company -- arrive alive
mark accidental deaths. In a little town each one is a mute story -- we all know them, we don't tell them. One is a cousin. He was sixteen. Beer? Maybe. It goes unspoken. I was sixteen. Too young.

His little town for the funeral. Two bars on main street, three churches, the implement dealer. Dim, stale, the bar door swings like an airlock. Yellow cracked varnish, the livestock report. Men cup their hands around sweating bottles as if they were candles.

Winter now and an uncle missing. Fences drifted, fields scrubbed grey. The car in the ditch, door dislocated like a jaw. He has we say Alzheimer's we mean alcoholic dementia. The whole town out, early dusk, pink, then sepia, the flashlights swinging.

Why do I miss it? In that empty endless wirestrung darkness, the whole town out. The flashlights swinging.