In the Absence of Clocks

Finding the Old Family Farm II

56 Finding the Old Family Farm II Near the Western Buh River, the traditional division between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, East and West On the river, a black snake cuts water, ripples on a farmer’s brow. I kneel to caress the green necks of soybeans. Fingers of light tear through their leaves. The thin boy, my guide, affixes paper to a cross. A scarecrow’s shadow stretches across the field, black loam shaping from the plow. The boy says how this farm was once a quarry. Churches as far as Warsaw will remember these fields. As Masha bathes, the river named God drags between countries. The boy says that I am free to walk her westward, over the boundary water—take her home. I have no more questions. The boy’s kite rises. Yellow and blue, it’s all that holds back the sky. ...