Dust
57 Dust I am teary this morning, not with longing but with the dust of dying summer, whirled up in the wake of county machines trying to tame the yellow ditch rows, trailed by tractors as farmers glean the last scant hay as a wrinkled veil reddens the ridgetop, a perjury of promised rain. My ridge life perched near woods, rusty dogwoods, and fox bark is my grandfather’s life far from paved road bustle. My road is paved, but my well tastes of limestone crisp and cold, like his well where we drew long plungers to swirl in galvanized buckets. In Dad’s house on the raw edge of suburbia, town water smelled of bleach and hot tar, not bedrock. Past our house at the end of the street, town dropped off to deep hollows and steep fields, a bridge to where night dripped like fire when the rains still came. ...
OR
