Country Celebration

Every hour feels like noon, butterfly
too far to define, maybe yellow gone
hiding. Sometimes the idea of flight
is a rough sketch in receipt’s margin
where vector fades into spotted grease.
I am earthbound in these last days
of the fair, dusty red tents rolled haphazard
onto a patient truck, a series of stakes
struck too deep to retrieve. Everyone here
gets a ribbon, edges neatly zigzagged.
Pies fuzz into mold, box fans rustle
through heady tobacco. Lapse of days
spent waiting for a solution to surface.
What tilted sleeps in a lazy dust,
fry oil spiked with sugar and aging
rockers and the close smell of cattle
penned in their lowing. I’m not sure
how to live here anymore. An icee
puddles the asphalt with vivid blue.