It's been a wet year 
and the grass is thick and green 
but come August it will be dry and brown, 
prickly on the bottoms of bare feet. 
You will not find sprinklers 
dotting lawns out here. 
This is farm country 
we do not have lawns 
we have yards where dogs run free, unfenced 
and a chicken strolling in search of a bite to eat 
is not rare enough to attract notice. 

Home is where the heart is 
and even after four years as a city girl 
I still defiantly proclaim this piece of my heart 
that found life in a world 
filled with low barbed wire fences 
that we clambered over, under, or through 
on a regular basis 
ignoring the boundaries of property 
as we explored the trees and the fields. 

My friends all had barn clothes and work boots 
they spent their summers baling hay. 
Our own barn was long past its farming days 
when it could hold cows in comfort. 
It stalls played home instead 
to lawnmowers and snow-blowers 
in various stages of death. 
It's pig pen, when I was then, I meticulously 
raked clean of old hay and corn cobs 
piled a foot thick on its concrete floor 
to make a clubhouse that would provide refuge 
from the heat and mosquitos 
that made my tree house, 
an old weeping willow perched on the bank of a creek 
inhabitable in the summer. 

Home is where the heart is 
and no matter how high I climb 
in the ranks of the cultural, intellectual elite
I am still a white-trash, country girl at heart.