June 1910, Susquehanna Valley

Far out in the fields, dusk,

the alfalfa rushing in strong wind,

an acquaintance traveling

with my great-grandfather falls ill,

dies. Only hours earlier

the road grew so muddy

the two men got down from their carriage

to pull the horses through the muck

and a sun-shot haze of rain; the valley,

like a greenhouse, holding

its wet smell of redbuds

stretching their branches awkwardly out

like the bare and lazy arms of boys.

At twenty-nine, my great-grandfather

looked the older of the two, already the eyes

of a frustrated prize-fighter. Too far from home

the journey’s pale dirt running

in ashen runnels from the man’s scalp

as if he were washing a horse.

When his wet weight cannot be pulled

his forehead and hands on the wet pinewood floor

that is like spongy earth now, and says nothing

at all, but hears the sound of newspaper pages

turning softly inside a carriage, feels the tinny taste

of earth in the teeth, and sees outside, the brown cows

darkening around a pond pancaked with sun-glare.