Where the Pinwheel Turns

Many are dead in that windy place on the flat ridge-top at the dwindled end of the gravel road. Many are dead in that lonely place next the ruined church and the windowless school where hymns echo low and the chorus of sums drifts lost in the cedars. Many are dead and some in rows with lichened limestones measuring out the sunken lengths in the withered grass. Many are dead and no one comes. But on the farthest side at the edge of the woods is a little dirt mound where a toy tractor waits and a plane and a truck and a shabby wet bear, and a pinwheel turns in the wind. There's a stone with a name and a single day's date. And a pinwheel turns in the wind in the wind a pinwheel turns in the wind. -Barbara Mabry 60 ...