Pine pitch under my fingernails,
gravel in my prayers,
the creek keeps muttering secrets
to the roots that hold this hill in place.

We stack winter in rough-cut cords,
leaning like old men against the shed.
Ax blade rings out a sharp amen,
turning deadfall into Sunday heat.

The radio is all static and revival,
preacher crackling through the rainclouds,
but I know a truer scripture
written in mud tracks and foxfire.

It reads:
thou shalt not hurry the thaw,
thou shalt not trust straight roads,
thou shalt love the ones who stay
when the holler fills with fog and memory.

So I hang my doubts on a fence nail,
let them rust beside my father’s tools,
and learn to say hallelujah
to the rough touch of this backwoods life.

They said the whistle marks the hours,
factory steam and courthouse bells
dividing up our days like land lots,
survey lines through the human heart.

But out past the last streetlight,
time moves how it pleases:
in the lazy swing of a porch chain,
in the quick flare of a match in the dark.

We keep our clocks in mason jars,
buried beside contraband dreams,
waiting for the night we dig them up
and watch all those stolen minutes spill.

You can measure a life in pay stubs,
or in miles of double-yellow crossed.
I count mine in engines turned over
with no destination but away.

So when the sirens start their sermon
about duty and good behavior,
we answer with tail lights disappearing
into a road that keeps no schedule at all.

First, gather what will burn:
old letters, pine knots, newspapers
full of other people’s wars.
Every page a map you’re refusing.

Second, strike the match like a promise.
Let the tiny sun bloom and tremble,
a wild thought at the end of a stick,
then lay it down among the tinder.

Third, sit back and be small for once.
The fire will do the talking now,
fluent in crackle and smoke,
translating everything you almost said.

Watch how the flames rewrite the night,
how they paint your tired face
with outlaw colors — copper, amber, blood.
In this light, even regret looks holy.

Last, when only coals remain,
black planets with red cores,
learn the oldest instruction:
tomorrow is built from what you dare to burn.

The billboards promise everything:
last chance fireworks, blessed oil changes,
fried chicken under fluorescent halos,
freedom in four easy payments.

At the truck stop, neon hums psalms
to chrome and fatigue. A waitress
with a faded eagle tattoo
refills my coffee like communion.

Out back, the dumpsters steam in winter air,
and somewhere beyond the loading dock
an old song about a train and a broken treaty
drifts from a cracked transistor radio.

This country is a stubborn ghost,
haunting its own reflection:
ghost towns with Wi-Fi,
prayer hands on steering wheels.

Still, on certain nights, heading nowhere,
the lines on the highway blur into story.
The moon keeps pace in the side mirror,
and the whole republic feels like a fable
you might yet rewrite before dawn.