| "Baby fingers broken across the landscape,
that's what they look like," she said, watching
dry thunderheads come in from the northeast.
"Reaching up like they're going to get something."
She pursed her lips. "We used to sit here drinking
tea in the evening, just like you and I are doing.
Americans don't drink tea. Talk. You can talk."
It wasn't the same after Ricky moved away.
He took something out of the equipment with him,
so that it didn't shine as much and needed more oil.
We didn't hear the ticking in the barn anymore.
We slept heavier than summer in its humidity.
We divided our evenings into words like ice floes
between catching field mice and bringing in the cows.
You should have come to visit then.
I would have liked it, and he wouldn't know.
It might have saved a lot of empty years,
might have made the sunsets less desolate.
I might have carried a life into that world.
As it is, I can't say why he left.
He kept a postcard diary of sorts and I'd get notes:
Walking was the easiest way to get away.
Put space between yourself and the crime
without using wheels, without credit cards.
Hit the road that runs between macadam
and ignore the cities, the incendiary points of capitol power.
Trust the women with long gray hair and slack eyes,
the gentle hands that would trap steel spiders on hot days. |
