Nothing Really Changes

By Bliss Bonner

It’s December now and there’s no snow on the ground.

A sign flashes orange,

“use caution”

flashes again,

“slow beet trucks.”

Cows speckle fields,

and Russian olive shadows stripe empty canals.

Lights flash atop the grain bins that rise like skyscrapers over the fields.

Horses turn their backs to the wind,

a few goats stand on a hill,

and the train tracks stretch on.

I think of endless drives along this stretch of road

before I was tall enough to see out the window.

I’d sit in my brown car seat,

fingers sticky with honey

from my toast stacked with peanut butter and banana too.

Nothing changes out here.

It’s always the same goats and horses

trees and cows

grain and trains.

There’s the place that sells lumber

the one that sells rocks

and the place that always sold Christmas decorations year round,

but it looks like they stopped.

This highway got a new gas station a few years back,

but other than that, 

(and the fact that there’s no snow)

no, nothing really changes.

The road winds through farmland,

and the train tracks stretch on,

and as the weather cools the beets pile high.

So now, 

in December, 

when the sun sets early,

the road is illuminated with headlights, road signs, and grain bins flashing

where they touch the dark sky.

No, that’s right.

Nothing really changes, does it?