Memory slips into time

Time clouted hard through the marshy valleys,
the sun’s risings and settings,

the moon’s waxings and wanings.

Once she wished the moon pause beside the hill.

In the snow she’d fired the Fordson’s crankcase.

Then the crank-pulled tractor broke

her right shoulder out of shape.

She cursed its poor traction in the deep snow.

In times of leavened hope she built the farm,

churned butter and pressed cider,

grew crops, pastured cows and sheep;

Her disappointments were crosses shouldered.

She helped the hardcases who robbed the bank,

fed them food in the hill field;

A lit jailhouse with locked cells,

her mind had depths they did not look into.

The shower tinkled in the stone horse trough.

Life’s page yellowed brittlely.

Memory slipped into time,

like a swallow flying by her window.

Her death was an ice sliver in their hearts.

They remained in the graveyard,

neither talked nor cried nor stamped

their boots frozen into flat white paws.