In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon

just so, they start the mowing machine,leaving the land its long windrows,and air strokes the leaves dry.Sometimes you begin to push; you want tohurry the sun, have the hours expand, becauseclouds come. Lightning looks out from their hearts.You try to hope the clouds away.‘Some year we’ll have perfect hay.’

secure houses. At her job in the libraryshe arranged better and better flowers, and whenstudents asked for books her hand went outto help. In the last year of her lifeshe had to keep her friends from knowinghow happy they were. She listened while theycomplained about food or work or the weather.And the great national events…

This is the field where grass joined hands,where no monument stands,and the only heroic thing is the sky.Birds fly here without any sound,unfolding their wings across the open.No people killed – or were killed – on this groundhallowed by neglect and an air so tamethat people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

haunches twitch now and then in gusts of powder snow,their owners inside for hours, forgetting as wellas they can the miles, the circling plains, the still townthat connects to nothing but cold and space and a fewstray ribbons of pavement, icy guides to nothingbut bigger towns and other taverns that glitter and wait:Denver, Cheyenne.Hibernating in…

screaming toward some drama, the kind of endthat Berky must have some day, if she isn’t dead.The wildest of all, her father and mother cruel,farming out there beyond the old stone quarrywhere highschool lovers parked their lurching cars,Berky learned to love in that dark school.Early her face was turned away from hometoward any hardworking place;…

white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.Notice what this poem is not doing.A house, a house, a barn, the oldquarry, where the river shrugs–how much of this place is yours?Notice what this poem is not doing.Every person gone has taken a stoneto hold, and catch the sun. The carvingsays, ‘Not here, but called…