In the Kingdom of the Ditch

Meditation on Hunger at 2 a.m.

92 Meditation on Hunger at  a.m. Night is the black earth in the garden, a peach held to the sky as the moon writes the history of its shadow on the bedroom floor. Awake, I remember cherries in a white bowl and think of the faces of those I have loved rising to the surface of the pond where I fish with my sons. The flesh fades if not fed; this is the business of living. In his dying my father taught me language fails. Thus, his love for the turnip’s sting, even when soaked in butter and cream, or the sweet on sweet of honey drizzled over baked apples, makes an elegy of autumn olive as it takes over this field. How could it be otherwise, and what choice do we have? Like him I give thanks for the neighbor’s draft horse, asleep and dreaming in its stall, enormous teeth moving over oats that still sit in a scoop, waiting for a hand to offer them. ...