Until we sail across
the last grains of western sight,
until our edge is defined
by combine trails
that row wakes of tilled sod
into hand shakes—
when the last family
breathes the last toxic gust
that cuts a whistled edge
from homestead glass,
where divided light seeps
creased daguerreotypes
and another town folds—
when I’ve heard rafters
rattle loose during
fifty-year dust storms,
after you left the coast
piss broke, let the farm list
and sink, into restive hills
we couldn’t rebuild,
can I see those steppes rise to nowhere.