The Passing

In the bet with her home

as to which would go first,

Mother lost

and was planted

under uprooted flowers, free

from kin quarrelling

over porcelain.

.

I keep silent,

not caring for things easily broken.

.

The screen door creaks and clicks behind me.

Sunset is spilling over the fields,

staining the corn stalks

bowed over land no longer ours.

Four generations of my blood harrowed here,

breaking the ground, and then their dreams,

the bones of their faith

crumbling like dirt after harvest.

.

All that remains

is the husk of this house,

its unfurnished spaces as drained now of spirit

as grave flowers blooming with rootless illusion,

as the photographs I will show my children:

Here we played tea party,

There we canned tomatoes,

This is your grandmother,

standing in the doorway.

.

As the sky burns, I say softly to it

and the unburdened fields

and all other things that fade,

a word of thanks

on behalf of all who have passed through.