Night Riders

If not for the mangroves and dunes, Granny and her
back room, or the creeks and swamps and marshes,
it might have mattered more that we had been raised
on cinder block, stacked two by two under a single-
wide trailer, toddling through a red-black forest of
thick shag, silver-lined, plucking out curly shavings of
aluminum because they laid the carpet before they
cut out the windows.

When the trailer pitched in storm, a snare played by
the branches of cypress, we were knocked out by the
assault of cloud cannons, pelting the roof with
rapid-fire–so sound was sleep, so deep our dreams,
and we would ride her into midnight, the trailer with
its hitch pointing forward like a prow–but that was
us too. There. Then. Now.

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Originally published in The Arlington Literary Journal, Issue 206, February 2025

© 2025, Tom Pearson