Indiana, While It Lasted, and: Pluck

Indiana, While It Lasted

She drove them out of town at dusk. Past the fluorescent lights of truck stops,

their twitching signs. Whole fields of gold tassels undulated in the wind, an accordion

of small birds. That’s how things were. A tractor path between cloying rows of corn.

The boy’s hand drumming his thigh until they thumbed for buttons and straps.

The metal buckle dug its jaw into her knee, and she touched his skinny shoulders,

the sparse field of hair along the sternum. Gas-station sodas seeped through their paper cups,

purple light still grazing the west. A late summer then of thirst and distant passing

cattle rigs. She drove them home, her shaking hands steady on the wheel.

Pluck

Michigan cranberries and half pecks of yellow Krispies weighted the tables

in the storeroom barn. Cider spiced my siblings’ cornhusk hair. The woodstove

smoldered and spent its fuel, my fingers tracing knotted gourds. I shook with the cold’s

breath on the back of my neck, each day’s darkening. Outside, the orchard’s hills

shuddered toward sleep. Root-choked caverns, I imagined, that might open like a wound

and swallow. But above, apples spilled from trees. Late crop, bountiful and heedless

to the surety of frost. Be brave, be brave, they whispered, chill to the touch.