In Illinois I passed tiny a field of active oil pump jacks on I70. I always forget that Illinois is an oil producing state until I see them, the heads in smooth movement, up and down, like a bowing monk forever giving thanks to the fields for this gift. In Oklahoma all of the pump jacks I’ve seen are stationary. I don’t know if they’ve just been given a break but a few are rusting and overgrown with thin, twisting trees that force their branches through the joints and the scaffolding and eventually cover the thing entirely. The effect is rather like a scar. Skin enveloping a rusting needle left in the vein after the blood ran out. And that’s not what saddens me about them. More, it’s that they put me in mind of a poet who publishes a single book and then stays that way, bowed in some type of adoration.
