180 The Meadow Driving the Delta North Jeffrey Alfier Trains hauled iron shadows through the late dusk. Distance became lost behind me as each town drew into focus, like a photograph emerging in the red light of a darkroom. Side streets diminished in shadows. Leaves scattered in culverts like birds in a fowler’s net. Wisteria redeemed abandoned brick. I reached the motel late, gas running on echoes. Through the curtains of another room, a woman pulled herself up from the bed, her bearing delicate, the stagnant light of a low-watt bulb ambering her face. In the morning, I wake from a dream where I’d touched the shoulder of my last living friend. Through the window blinds, at the edge of my vision, a hunter just entered the woods.
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