Overshot

Two friends walk through the heat
out to the drug store
as just a way to say they went somewhere,
and carry home plastic bags
pale as flaking bone.

Construction crowds the off-ramp
orange cones stand straight
like garden gnomes
where nothing grows.

A man with foggy eyes
waits for checks
to arrive in his rusted
awning shade
and sharpens
dead branches
into slingshots.

Miles from the airport
by a field of cows
dark as shadows
I realize have I landed
in the wrong city.

I should be halfway
around the world by now
at a hotel bar
wrapped in piano keys
and bits of ice
suspended in a misty glass
while the lights just get
dimmer and dimmer.