Wishes still ahead of us, time,
The world still ahead of us,
No one rushing, no hurry.
Corn seedling delicate and light, stained glass,
coming up where we watched radishes rise
out of the ground under a winter sun
The magic is out there if you go out to witness it,
the marvel of a town filled with tourists in love,
you cannot see the swirl if you are not going to them,
strange how miracles require a crowd there.
Meanwhile, the corn grows on a slant in straight rows,
unwatched, mostly, and he walks jn
with a handful of yard flowers and wildflowers
and their perfume walks in with you through the dining room,
I know how to be poor, less clothes, then the fan comes on
against an open window when it has to,
He says some people act
like they don't know there is dirt under the grass
(and it’s free)
Turn over, turn over
(Crimson clover)
Mornings are long when he is gone
to town and it acted like rain, a sleepy stretching cat morning,
I know how to be poor and it is so rich
to lay in bed in the morning summer sun and read
The wind is still with us, another week of rain,
We didn't dance and I hardly danced
and I only howled that one time,
the juke joint chapel emptying and filling,
alive after all
Two churches, the scabs of a roof flaking
and nothing within or beneath to heal it,
The steeple leaning now more like a tree shaped by a storm,
like a man sinking to his knees,
Here I am in the field where the treasures begin,
(Chalk on rust,
Rain on dust,)
Stooping, sun shaped daisies against the canoe, only here,
Well I built the fence because I believed I had a child.
Well the first year I lived here again, we made a cherry pie,
Look at the muscadines climbing, remember last summer, at the end of it we made a pie, too.
The entirety of the pie like a flower, hardly there but beautiful if you are attentive enough,
I watch the way the objects change on the porch
and I don't move. I know, I can never remember all of this,
take a photo,
Sweet potato plants and banana peppers, insecticide,
his mother's Terra cotta bird house, lamps, rattan, wicker,
A blue table painted like the sky,
We have to do something, except sometimes
it's enough to witness
And I hope they worked together to make it so we could have that muscadine pie;
his father, his wife, his wives, his mother, too.
It feels like someone is walking behind me, go turn around,
To turn around and see there is nobody, all of this my own again for now,
His brother called to ask for his father's number, his father who died a decade ago or more,
She said she put a hundred candles in the bathroom on the ground
before she got into her wedding dress, down into the tub, to be found.
Please do not sit st the dinner table and begin conjuring that way,
because can’t you see it now, too?
Rusted nails, a chimney brick burned up, a fork, a scarlet comb, blue glass, wire, milk glass, marble, sodium glass, a button,
One day: a ring and a cross and a plow.
I left without saying anything. I didn't mean to. Whistling lost into the wind.
Last and not least, persimmon and pawpaw and deer prints
Nowhere-bound.