David Kowalczyk - The Land Creates

My mother has lived on this farm
all her life.
She wanders the house,
moaning to the walls.
Her hands jerk about,
branches in a blizzard.
She asks about a woman
I haven't spoken to in years.


'Will Wendy visit in the spring? '
Five times the question echoes.
Five times I answer, 'No. No. No! '


I pull on heavy boots
and clamber off into
the chill, soggy field
choked with rotting leaves,
fraught with withered goldenrod.


Along the weed-swamped banks,
Cadillac Creek's muddy murmur
is shattered by a wild yowl.
A massive gray cat leaps from
an oak tree and bounds off into
a thicket of blackberry brambles.


These corn fields and maple woods
are cursed.
Is it fear, trapped deep
beneath this clay-veined earth,
set free in spring by the plow's cold blade,
or memory?

David Kowalczyk

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-land-creates/