I wrote this to the April prompt -- Rust -- on Rob Walker's Substack: The Art of Noticing.
It takes a lot of energy to make iron; pure metals are a pinhole of order in a universe that wants to unravel. In the woods near an old field, a truck bed rusts in the shade. A weathered grain auger peers from behind the trees like a shy dinosaur. An old dishwasher from the 70s inhabited by raccoons. A washing machine tub. Once, a red plastic rain boot shredded by the sun. Briefly, homesteads dotted the valley. I remove their barbed wire, the posts in a pile in the grass. Gravestones in the township cemetery.
dusk and a solitary wood thrush