Crossing Kansas by Train by Donald Justice

The telephone poles
have been holding their
arms out
a long time now
to birds 
that will not 
settle there
but pass with 
strange cawings
westward to 
where dark trees
gather about
a waterhole. This
is Kansas. The
mountains start here
just behind
the closed eyes 
of a farmer's
sons asleep 
in their workclothes. 

~ from Night Light (Wesleyan University Press, 1963)