A Country Drive
By Alan Pendleton

We drove the Virginia back-country
Late autumn in my Porsche . . . fast
Laughing at the twists and turns.

At a hand-built stone wall
And hedges long naked of birds
We stopped for a snapshot with my new camera.

You sat the wall comfortably
Framed by rough wheat fields swelling
past their sell-by date spinning straw into gold.

Faint sun barely skimmed
The evergreen mountains coursing brokenly
Behind you waiting winter’s pallid touch.

Naked trees etched with bleakness
That might have been drawn by Wyeth in
Mottled currents of gray powder.

Blending under clouds barely clouds
The scene an altarpiece or
Darkened fane to nature’s dying.