Smyrna

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By a strip of highway spilled beside a swamp
that exhales sphinx moths and hums mosquito hymns:
their kids sack out on sofas while the men
make sweatless love to tired wives, then go
perspire in oil-smeared, orange hard hats
on caffeinated graveyard shifts. Days off,
they jaw across their truck beds lined with cans
in the gravel lot outside the donut shop.
Come winter, dawn and dusk, they tramp the bogs
with shotguns, taking life as it comes to them.
Pass through and you’ll be met with friendly waves
and icy stares. At the edge of town, by the caution light,
a metal sign, green, lettered in white:
WELCOME—riddled with steel shot.