Here is another poem inspired by Mindy McGinnis, this time it’s her second book, IN A HANDFUL OF DUST, a young adult dystopian that feels very real! The Road meets Little House on the Prairie.

Across the Country

Robert L. Slater
Across the country,
All we are in a handful of dust

Dry and dusty, wet and dank
Across the country, sweat soaked stank
Down in dungeons, basements base
In storm cellar’s flooded waste

Across the country seeking sun
Avoiding ghost towns till day is done
They cling together, torn apart
From their loved ones facing dark

Horses new riders across the country
Dead and dying with little to see
Fields of farmlands past big water’s flow
Houses of wholly emptiness where none dare go

Mossy headstones, rain they flee
Left forgotten across the country
Horses lost in flash-flooding canyon
Solace found in desert sundown

Across the country, dry and dusty
This is all we are in a handful of dust.

Next week I’ll share my last writer inspired poem for this April. It’s a poem I wrote after an afternoon of reading Pablo Neruda in English and Spanish!