pennsylvania gothic

fog spills across the cornfields.
we have been driving through
finger woods for days. you use your phone flashlight.
reading a map from the 80s. we get service periodically.
a few texts. a snippet of a youtube video
you watch to keep yourself company.
everyone is alone in pennsylvania but 
especially travelers.  
we learn the names of lakes from the gps. 
drive to one & walk until we reach the shore. 
there are footprints of strangers. a church bell warbles
even though it is the middle of the night.
against our better judgment,
we drink from the lake. the trees turn 
into copperheads & chase us back to the headlights.
we drive & drive. pass the same strip mall
thirty times before you start weeping
& we decide we must go there. a dry cleaners 
without an attendant. pizza place that closed
ten years ago. nothing for us. nothing
for anyone. all the signs from dead places have
"coal" & "steel" & "slate" in the names. 
the mountain laughs sometimes. all the holes
in her lungs where men scrambled 
like rats in the dark. the trains that carried
her meat to the cities. now she watches
as the land swallows again. turns men
into coal. shoes hung from a telephone wire 
in a small town with nothing but a smoke shop
& a turkey hill. we wait at a spotlight,
alone, letting the ghosts march past 
in a little parade. you ask me, "are we going home?"
i answer, "no" & we keep driving on an empty tank. 
pull over & fill it with bones & pokeberries.