They shatter the afternoon
in a daily pitch of high-powered
gunfire here in rural Oxford, Michigan.

The neighbors are spitting lead
into the fields once seeded
with feed-corn and alfalfa.

Never mind the horse farms near-bye
the golf course across the street
never mind any consideration of residents
or common sense.
Someone famous wants to
put a shooting range in this quiet rural
neighborhood, and it is allowed.

Some friend of a former governor
some political favor and now my Mother
cannot have a peaceful afternoon.

Automatic rounds ring out daily,
displace this small parcel of country.
As if it were an occupied country.

Mom planting in the garden bed
or tossing hay from the storage shed,
and American firepower close at hand.

And while they are the subject of much neighborly hatred,
it was celebrated in the 2014 Edition of Shooting Illustrated.
when the state Supreme court decided the case

a few neighbors have even joined in arms,
so that now it is unclear what direction
the shooting comes from or in what direction it goes.
Renée Nixon