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 tassels

bowed over land no longer ours.

Four generations of my blood harrowed here,

breaking the ground, and then their faith.

All that remains to divide

is the house,

and it is fading,

clinging to her time like dirt to the harvest—

its unfurnished spaces as drained now of spirit

as grave flowers blooming with rootless illusion,

as the photographs I show my children:

Here we saw deer,

There we grew tomatoes,

This is your grandmother,

standing in the doorway.

As the sky burns, I say softly to it

and the ripening fields

and all other things that fade,

a word of thanks

on behalf of all who have passed through.