Her tangled mass of long, thin hair

caught the wind and held it and they played,

like red yarn holds kittens

whose whole life in a moment is to stare and paw, fixated.

The concrete of the cracking farm wall beneath her feet

looked like Time giving all his strength to help her stand

as she walked and talked,

and in her smile, the Sun…

Each memory matters as much to me as my lungs

to keep me breathing,

to keep me alive.

She was my poetry child,

her movements words that I have taken down

on the wrinkled lines of my brain.

She gave me pages filled with the trees and sky—

how she captured the sky—

and the grass that once touched her face…

Still so distinct from any other grass in the world.

Taken down from her hill by the grayest cloud,

she sleeps and keeps a constant watch on the stars.

Ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand…

never through, her fragile fingers glow against the blue of twilight.

My light…

When I return to the wall on afternoons that keep no name,

I dust the cracks with weeds and wonder

if the wind can recognize what she inherited from me—

soft skin, a focused brow,

a small brown freckle on her left ear…

Sometimes it nods or strokes or speaks of these things,

but most often of her warmth

in words so softly spoken I can’t trace their origin;

of a disposition so mild, in voice and in pen,

yet so powerful that it traveled backwards,

from her into me.

We are free.