Border Lands

A borderland is nowhere, personified.
It's neither there nor here.
Neither side claims ownership,
it all feels abandoned, forlorn.

There's a stretch of Highway 26,
on the Indiana/Illinois border
-- flat, featureless, nothing but pure east/west --
possibly Eisenhower's original pavement.

Neither state seems to maintain it,
nobody travels TO the border, only across it.
The grass is wild and tangled;
a lone tree stands: gnarled; twisted.

Six miles on either side,
that's the no-man's-land; from US-41
in Indiana, to Hoopeston in Illinois;
all of it in limbo; flux; uneasy misalignment.

The actual border: no more than a line --
a kink where the roads show
each state's definition of east/west;
each side two degrees off from the other.

Driving it is as if holding one's breath --
reality seems to pause, space/time tilts,
rationality is put on temporary hold;
anything seems discordantly possible.

And then we coast into Hoopeston, Illinois --
nothing more than a few houses in the prairie,
an intersection; a train track; a party store;
a symbolic outpost of civilization, nonetheless.

We bought a beer there on Sunday
-- Something Indiana won't allow its people --
and we returned with our trophy,
proof that on the other side, something is different.

--ns 2-21-2007