The Searchers

The Searchers From Conner's Ridge high above the foggy bottom. From the lightning-struck house where, day after day, the wind Sailed slates off into the yard and the sun, Sinking, seemed to touch the chimney, and the moon, Ascending, tangled in the pear tree, that good old man Has gone away. Blue-eyes squinting, he whistled Reels as he hoed the corn in the highfield, or, picking Summer Transparents, crisp and green, he poured Them into baskets. Everything spoke to him. The horses, knee-deep in Black-eyed Susans, wickered. The wheat whispered its growing into his ears. Timothy tapped his knees in time to his step And birdwings brushed his yellow, wide-brimmed hat. When I was ten he died by his own hand. I spent the next summer gathering him up As Isis did Osiris: his coaxing voice From the yard where he stood to call the cattle home, His clover-scent from the closet where his jacket hung. The vigor of his arm from walls where his hammer Marked the boards, sinking square-head nails. His resolute grip from the sweat-dark handle of the scythe And the sickle, from the two-pronged frying fork He ate with, the syrup dish where he dipped his bread. Like me, his loyal Bluetick looked for him In woodlot and in field, in barn and sty. She seldom ate or slept. If dogs could weep She would have wept. She shared my loss though not My need to ask him why. —Annabel Thomas 85 ...