She’s lived here all her life,
a gift to know this land, its seasons,
tastes, smells, mindful of its wants—
even knowing every acre was once taken
by violence. We all have mortifications,
history’s footprints threaded among the trees.
From the porch, sunset paints the surface
of the pond, pregnant with twigs
and twitching insects, a Gaia of breeze
strums shuffled reeds.
She’s had a good cry, one that could
have left a lesser woman sharp-cornered.
Later she will wash the dishes,
her face splashed and wakened,
her life unremarkable as the house fly
balanced on her dinner plate,
rubbing its bristly bowed legs together.
