Thoughts In The Parking Lot Of A Country Store

Through rural Virginia, into West Virginia, and back, we enjoyed taking our time travelling by small, historic towns, many with their beauty still not published on the internet.

We wound down 29 through mountains, sharing the road with mid-afternoon logging trucks laden with what they had reaped…

Small farms with snow now on the fields still manage to etch out harvests in these hills. 

At Forks of Buffalo we stopped.
I waited in the warm car
as they hurried, into the lone country store…  

Ahead, a long truck swerved over to the shoulder.
A grimy bear of a woman descended from the passenger side,
and following, stuck for a moment to her heel, 
a plastic bag.

I watched her briefly register the bag as she continued past;
the bag slowly blew, in hesitant luffs, across the road.

The beauty, the bounty, and the rape were summed up in this moment:
the bag latching with one snag of a twig, into permanence.

A car pulled out, alongside.
It was the woman.
I saw, as she turned onto the highway, 
her license plate read:

ILOGTOO