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In My Light Year
- University of South Carolina Press
- Chapter
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148 In My Light Year The day is bright, the cardinal at the feeder is brighter. Beneath the doorjamb, stray leaves that slid in on the night wind, stick to the floor like decorations. It is cool in the unlit hallway. At the end, behind the closed door, the artist fills her canvas with gray; washing over waves, patches of grass, and sunshine swimming through the air as if the earth was merging with the sky. The other side is black, with tracings of a shape as if a ghost lived there. I am walking down the middle, past the nest made of twigs, moss, and long strands of black horse tail hair sticking out from the sides. Emptied of four gray tufted phoebe chicks, the nest seems suddenly useless and sad. I move on into the pasture, past the brown horse with the white star on her forehead and a single scratch on her back, dipped over the knobby fence, chewing on tall grass that grows beside the road, which is filling with cows that won’t budge, as I step over 149 the broken oak limbs blocking my path until I find the cedar split open in last night’s storm, and touch the pink pulp rising from its center as if the great tree had given birth in the night. [3.209.81.51] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:11 GMT) This page intentionally left blank ...