When you squint at the
telephone wires that crisscross the clouds,
you can barely make out the sneakers
strung like broken Christmas lights
along the trailing black lines.
They sway in the wind,
soles flopping forward
and unraveling at the seams:
Empty cocoons for
barefooted boys
who play basketball beneath
the shade of a magnolia tree—
their arms outstretched and pointed toward the sky
and the stars
and stadium light dreams
that are larger than the wheat fields their fathers call home in this one horse town.
Maybe they’ll taste more than the grit in
their chilled beers and the crust of
dirt beneath their bitten fingernails.
Maybe years from now, they’ll exchange
the worn fabric of their
tractor thrones
for crowns and cold Coronas.
But for now they hang in the balance
on Kansas telephone wire.