We Look for a Ditch

In every direction
the green hills, rolled
for miles
outside the car windows

The sky grew
mountainous,
turning the color of rocks,
taking up space
like a fist

What do we do,
my husband asks,
if there
is a tornado?

A ditch, I say,
we head for a ditch,
and we drive along, searching
through our windows

But the farmlands of Minnesota
on an old, back highway
have other plans,
only pastures,
spanning outward and on

Like edges of the earth,
they curl forever,
and there is no ditch
on this stretch of road

We turn back
to face each other
afraid

By Jess Witkins

Biography:

Jess Witkins is a Wisconsin-based writer, blogger, and storyteller.
Her work has been published in local and national magazines. She is
president of the nonprofit writing community, Mississippi Valley Writers
Guild. Most recently her poems have appeared in *Ariel Chart, and s*he has
an essay titled “The Funeral Photographer” *in the anthology, *What
Remains: The Many Ways We Say Goodbye,* with Gelles Cole Literary
Enterprises.