Harm's Way: Poems

Country Letter

Country Letter Darling, everything here is as I left it, just older and worse for wear: the rusted flatbed I drive to town, the bullet holes outside The Little Grass Shack where years ago a man was shot to death. The stain on the pavement still rises red with the first drop of rain and it’s coming—a good end to August’s last stand, this heat that burns the yard yellow and slows the old man’s breath, makes him dizzy. I give him cold baths in the evening, and the doctor says any time, and the blood on the sidewalk says all we thought was gone is still with us or on its way back. Reason enough to stay up all night and think about how if you were here we’d go walking past the slanting ruin of the hog house, past the old transistor crackling Pasty Cline across the corn. I’d show you the hayloft where I first kissed a boy, his lips making static against mine, a small fire burning where no one could see. He smelled like the marsh smells right now—the fallen trees turning to mulch, the leaves to soil. This quiet drives me crazy. I turn on the TV, the radio, anything for noise. I’ve gone so far as to hang wind chimes on the back porch and ask the night to play me  something you’d play if I were home, your hands like lightning over the ivory. Last night, I found him crying at the window and tried to put him back to bed, but he pulled away. Then I saw them through the glass: the deer in the garden, two does eating tulips from the flower bed, chewing the petals down to soft, green stems. They came right up to the house, had nothing to be afraid of. How I want the same for us.  ...