October
From In the Fields’ Hands. 1998.
It is, but isn’t pastoral, two women
walking the prairie among the big
bluestem
and
dropseed grasses, among the bronze
and russets of fall, the sky a light blue,
a delicate ache, a subtle exclamation
of color, and the woman walking
together
remembering what? The rose gentians
of spring? The light combed by the
grasses?
Their daughters now grown? Perhaps
the lissomeness of their daughters,
their
laughter, and their small brown arms
which once waved through these fields?
Wild shooting stars of daughters, butterflies
among the milkweed, now far away
in
the fluorescence of basements, shopping
for bargains, flawed seconds, markdowns—
In the fall light the women walking together
look down. All around them is
autumn,
the dropseed burning with orange,
the white sage ringing them with crowns.
Used with the permission of Don Welch