By nightfall

She knows / settled into her land
she knows / the land will settle onto her
she knows / she is wholly unafraid she

lost her Silas twenty-
seven years come September they

stood through blighted mornings / stooped
beneath gritty eaves / toed
over ice bubbled gravel / laid hands
upon evening’s shimmered
lantern light

their shadows bled into one another
in life / in stillness

she makes herself become still at night
and inside her stillness he
still reaches for her she
still reaches for him
and the scent of their sweat has paled

we still claim the earth each morning
he said/ and she will change her mind by nightfall

they worked the land hard / they
worked each other harder / they
tried not to hurt each other with seventy-
six rough acres at their feet
and two baby girls at her breasts

sometimes they grew
a good season
and sometimes they
fell into the dust with
useless / ruined labor
and they knew they were only
one particular kind of dust / the kind
spat out from the clouds

each layer sacred
each grain a lesson

and she buried him in the middle of a quarter acre
that never grew anything but goldenrod
his shirt buttons were pale as potato flowers

he was without a topcoat
but his collar was clean
his hands and neck were scrubbed

the girls could not make it home
that season
in time to say goodbye
it did not rain

she re-reads their letters at the kitchen
table / their absences
and regrets written in an exaggerated
and flowery kind of script/ she sees

a certain trail of jittered sugar
between the bowl and her blue coffee cup/ it
seems almost elegant
on the crepe paper tablecloth

she brushes it away
and will sweep it all up by nightfall

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels