Slow
Published in
The Mountains Have Made Us Anthology
and This Business of Wisdom
(West End Press, 2010)
Eyes open, legs splayed in the powdery dirt,
she likes the cool of it, the dynamic surge
of just belonging to a place like this,
brown and barren and slow as rust.
She digs deeper with her toes and hums.
When the sun crests the kitchen window,
she catches fragments of light on her thumb
and drags her hand across her chin —
like buttercups.
This will be the year the piñons die,
the year the tamarisks stretch inches to the core,
the year she goes away
— and then returns
to find the worms still multiplying.
Maybe there is no final resolution,
yesterday is how it will be again tomorrow.
The earth will slowly crust into tenacious particles,
stillness cradled inside like a newborn.