It was a thin hope. Shorn field.
Yet he took care to marked all
the un-startling incidents. Cotton
wood drifting down in June.
A new road around the sharpest
elbow of creek. The white house
with a statue of Mary by its front stoop,
for sale after cancer ate out its inhabitant
—orange poppies now escaping her
fence to flood the ditch. Evening light
on the far hills, a Dutch still life with
dung smeared sheep. A lone car not
coming up the drive again and again,
gravel desperate to be crushed. Coolness
under the apple trees, thick grass
aisles between orchard rows, mossed
stone relentlessly beat by faucet drip.
A beer bottle in the sagebrush turned
upside down and bleached mouse skull
toppling out—the one attached tooth
coming to its point so succinctly.
©
is from Yakima, WA. She has published in Copper Nickel, Kestrel, The Tusculum Review, James Dickey Review, and has work forthcoming in NewSouth, Rattle, and the Tulane Review. Her chapbook "All Things are Ordered' is out from Finishing Line Press, and she teaches at the University of Georgia.
We’ve published three more poems by Blair: “The Test Scorer,” “Mine,” and “When.”
