Crushed Velvet Seats

My papaw is buried on the land where his grandfather
farmed. Before he died, he would lift me up
on the back of his mule, lead the way down a worn
path to the cemetery. Using a scythe, he would cut
down the weeds that threatened to erase our memory
of the dead. At each stone, he told me each name:

this one a brother who died at birth;
an uncle who drowned (some said it was suicide);
his father, shot dead over a card game;
a sister-in-law who died of the fever.

When cars died back then, they were parked in an
out of the way place on the farm. That’s where
cats went to have their kittens. That’s where my
brother and I played, kneeling on a crushed velvet
seat, gripping a stiff steering wheel, pretending
we were rushing down a new highway – a long way

from dying.

**

Wild Violets

A woman in a faded dress
takes my quarter for a vase
I don’t really need. I tell her,
It looks like rain. Something
to break the silence.

Another family farm has been sold.
By next year, these wheat fields
will be covered in concrete.
Beyond the barn, an old man
walks between the rows.

There are no plastic flowers there.
No floral wreaths beneath the sky.
Only wild violets grow beside
the standing stones. I hear
their tiny voices

rising.

**

Filaments

I watch from a hospital chair as you begin
the journey to heaven. When I reach for
your hand, I’m six years old again….

We stand in the rain, the two of us fishing
as others run for shelter and watch through
August windows steeped in summer rain.

You are beside me – patience, from years
of practice, written in the lines upon your brow.
As raindrops meet the surface of the lake,

we wait out the nibbles -
two sets of eyes glued to a red and white bobber
riding upon the ripples. My fingers curled

around a bamboo pole, I sense the tension
of the moment. The beginning battle
swirls and merges in unseen depths below.

You place your hands around mine,
we back up slowly and you whisper:
Wait, wait - not yet, not yet.

When the bobber dives, we lean back
into the bank and pull with all our might.
The line holds. At our feet, a monstrous fish -

mouth open, gasping for air.

**

Tobacco Leaves

There’s a red barn on the horizon.
I see it from my office window.
It lies beyond the highway,
beyond the fields. Too far to tell
if anyone still goes there.
If beasts of burden stand stoic
in their stalls.

My grandmother’s barn was a
weathered silver. The color
of her hair. Come winter,
’round a kerosene heater, we’d
strip tobacco there. She talked
about the weather. The signs.
About woolly worms

with big black bands and record
snow falls. She talked about
how it was for her – a girl,
when she stopped going to school,
stayed home with her mother,
helped tend to her sisters. I saw
how her best years curled back

like the leaves of tobacco -
brown and brittle.