In late afternoon sun, toddlers tilt
forward and back on yard swings
at the halfway home. The high
school girl who volunteers there
wants to know what mother,
what father would throw
a daughter out into the streets, say
Don’t come back or You are as good
as dead to me; and the middle-aged
woman washing up at the sink looks
through the window at the vanishing light,
startling at the sudden film on her cheeks.
What sifts through the packed soil
as years rush by? Swift as birds in the corn,
long green tassels in the summer evening;
lifted by wind, bearing redolence
of cow manure and honeysuckle.
Along the southbound road,
where the dip rises toward the knoll,
locals tell of a girl who rode behind
her brother on a motorcycle. Who
could have foreseen the truck in the other lane,
its side-view mirror glancing like a blade
along her jaw? The sky’s inverted basin
flooding her eyes with the surprise of indigo,
before the head’s brittle husk snapped back
and arms and fingers tightened in rigor
around the living body. That’s how we press
forward into deepening twilight, carry the shape
of our eternal cargo: the voice that breathes
in our ear saying love or goodbye—as we
crest the hill and gun to a stop, waiting for the lights
to flash and change from yellow to red to green.
