Windnoon

Windnoon

On the green hill with the river beyond it

long ago and my father there

and my grandmother standing in her faded clothes

wrinkled high-laced black shoes in the spring grass

among the few gravestones inside their low fence

by the small white wooden church

the clear panes of its windows

letting the scene through from the windows

on the other side of the empty room

and a view of the trees over there

my grandmother hardly turned her head

staring like a cloud at the empty air

not looking at the green glass gravestone

with the name on it of the man to whom

she had been married and who had been

my father’s father she went on saying nothing

her eyes wandering above the trees

that hid the river from where we were

a place where she had stood with him one time

when they were young and the bell kept ringing