Something in me wants
to walk again from Providence
with them—living, dead,
and unborn. Their lives wound
tightly in me. Now they are names
in our bible. Some birthed
in snowstorms, others
in spring thaw or born on Thursday
so I could plant corn on Friday.

(Rhoba Williams McKoon’s headstone)

Move me, wheel,
from the sea, by the Hudson,
through woods, fields.

My hand on your rim.
Growling bellies, oxen smells.
Make my feet go with my prayers.

Have I brought what I need
for the world ahead?
Who will ask for my stories?

Will I find my Snakeroot
and Sweet Ciceley?
Will the peonies survive?
Will I find good dirt, water for a well?

A soft fold over the edge, pink shoes lifted,
her image buoyant in the water below.
She stares into the cylindrical dark,
past moss and mottled snails pulled back
in their casings. Her face disappears
in the bucket splash.

The and then not.

Now the earth’s sweet liquid brims,
spills and falls back on the grass,
circles through roots to the well,
the river, and the bass pond.

Sisters remember the rescue of drowning
cats, Sunday train, ironing the family
tablecloth for Thanksgiving, sleigh rides
on Christmas—all remembered with different
authority. Birth order and farm chaos shrank
and aligned us until we formed our own feminine
geometry. Individual angles on a spring day.
Bodies, hearts, brains beat against each other
with multiple meanings for the same green
shutters on a clapboard farmhouse.    

This will be my epitaph—sixty three years in the kitchen.
Adeline’s lament

In one bowl: grief.
In another: mounds of strength.
Shoulders hunched.
Hands scrape corn from cobs.

Egg cakes on breakfast plates,
while she cans the Bartlett pears,
picks and shells peas.
Ready for months of winter.

No picnics on a warm beach,
ocean waves, no empty days. 
Just steam from the pressure
cooker and tomatoes in the sink.

I must write how it was—
how straight he walked down the road
with his new canteen and musket.

His letters of boredom, rot,
a bloodied creek. His father brought him
back in a pickle barrel. 
My only son—we needed him home.

Outside, chimney smoke fades
in the early hours—
my stropped heart by the well
and wormed fence
with the ache of everything.

Thunder starts. Time will come
when I can sleep.
Blessed rain but so little erased
with the rush and suck of water.

To come in from the barn,
packed in the eye of a blizzard,
his hands grip ropes. He fights
a white wind
no stopping, eyes closed, hand over hand.

Inside the house, Dad takes whiskey. 
Lots of whiskey. Jiggers straight.
Wind still blowing through him,
the whole of him
thanks the ropes. Slowly
he sinks into the sofa. No one talks. 

Then, high laughter rushes out,
wind driven
or whiskey driven. Overlapping laughter,
like another aspect of nature,
like breaking waves.

Hours pass. Trees twist hard,
Slapped and shrouded. Finally still.
Our mailbox hangs high from a tree
like a white dove.