Stars to the North,” Taylor Tucker

Taylor Tucker

Stars to the north, lightning to the south framed my drive over Labor Day weekend. Not for the first time, I gazed upon the face of God in the indomitable storm that swallowed up 131 as I made my way north from Champaign to Higgins Lake.

And that happy long weekend by clear water, when we broke 100,000 miles on Hillcrest Road in gentle yellow light. Badminton on the supple moss that Grandma hates and me about to turn twenty-five, less than one quarter of life if I have any say (which I don’t, really)

and how, when I returned, the sun hung in the lowest quadrant over the vast horizon of pale corn that will just barely make the harvest. How it slipped quietly down through ephemeral haze, whispering, “So long for now,” and took its rest.