Oil pumps rock steadily on the long ridge

like mosquitoes on a sleeping man’s arm

while behind the power plant, frogs emerge

from the black pond. Near a neighboring farm,

an antique radio phases between

“Mr. Sandman” and a faint foreign voice,

occasionally crackling into brief

periods of silence. The older boys

smoke cigarettes underneath a streetlight,

their shadows splayed across the white silos

in the feed lot. Every few hours, headlights

burst over the hill like a flare, a gold

penumbra on the horizon that fades

to a narrow beam above the highway.