In the pink of every lakelit evening
I rattled home from work, chin up

to catch the glimpse of blue flame,
a flirt of sulfur, beckoning of gulls.

Did they ever go home, lost sealake birds
with so much landscape in their cry?

There: the blue torch, proud as a monument,
on the only mountain in this landfill state.

Gulls danced over the blanching mound
and it was the most beautiful thing to me

because I was also from a place so blue,
so far away a landfill was a kind of home.

Edie Meade is a writer and musician in Petersburg, Virginia. She has been recently published in Louisiana Literature Journal, Gone Lawn, Room Magazine, Invisible City, The Harvard Advocate, JMWW, The Normal School, and Litro.