A Question of Medians

A Question of Medians

They cut 27 through the frayed fringe

of the battlefield and left behind

a vine of withered Georgia towns 

dangling like drought peaches 

from an asphalt stem: Rossville, 

Chickamauga, Rock Spring, Lafayette.

The county mows the median 

once, at most, a month; the municipalities 

keep theirs tight and low. You might, 

of a free afternoon, drive through 

without a map, and—using the length

of wheatgrass as a reference—know

the thresholds of your goings, the lines

clipping away in the rearview

like a poem or a named knowing,

all that unincorporated between

left to grow, to grow, to keep growing.