Leaving Greenhill Road

What we are trying to do here reminds me

that my father spent the last years of life

with scythe and solitude marking trails

that meandered these woods, and only

because this was where my stepmother loved

to walk each morning.

When we walked there last fall, it was already

Overgrown. We saw her dying in the window.

If you were listening, you heard

the whispers of the chicken house,

the missing tree:

You will not walk this way again, nor

reclaim what you left – he will cover it

with shadow, moss and kudzu; he will cover it

beneath layers of leaves and stone.

Your faith and family are buried here. Barbed

wire rusts and snaps, and silence

muffles the memories.

Do not leave them here to be beaten by the sun,

wrapped in a wreath of brambles, alone. Do not

thank this land for any lessons you learned. You

will not walk this way again without the lolling

of cows, or distant hymns, reminding you

what has been turned into this dirt.

Today in the yard on my hands and knees,

two hundred miles away, I am transfixed

by a cluster of roots I have only half

buried. They are loamy, knotted,

thick with instruction.