i remember how the wood would smell just as the last great tree was felled like many that came before it was used for table and a door a palette and a long hall rack hung my great grandfather s hat a stable and a barn a bed and a seat a roof and fence and a floor that creaked and a coffin leanin against the wall when there was a death in arkansas i liked the wagons and the wheels the wind that knocked us down in the fields and the girls with the southern drawl and those that came before were the pictures on the wall and the lone dogs howled and the crows would caw when there was a death in arkansas we were laid to rest out under the sun and we breathed our last and it was done and the air redeemed us and we would learn that a life was hallowed and we wouldn t burn hands folded gently to say goodbye it was just this place underneath the sky do you see our bones hidin like a toad in the old red dirt that is now a road beneath the sign that blinks off on and a shopping mall where the house is gone forgetting that a soul may call when there is a death in arkansas and a quilten patch of new concrete helps the trucks roll down the street there s a dollar store by the setting sun and a sign on the church says his will is done i can t see the birds or find the fields that hold my bones beneath the wheels and a mother worries that her son won t call and a tv stares at a blinking wall but the lone dogs howl and the crows still call when there is a death in arkansas