report to mama

 

(Evelyn Maddix Simpson- Febuary 27, 1934-July 25, 2006)

 

today the open spaces billow

and the ornate silences break in cane

the roads unused lay like sleep

between this year’s tall seasons

 

sunrise was nothing more than birds

a scatter of crows at the sun’s early edge

then gone as an hour moves across a road

the cornfields inarticulate with beauty

 

we have not lost what makes the world beautiful

this valley harvested by the beautiful workers

but we have lost who made us beautiful

our mother and the incantation of her laughter

 

it’s the mystery of the almond fields

those dark vistas deep as memory flecked with dreams

the absences in the farmers fields

my mother’s still bed at the unused hour

 

thousands of miles of daylit world ahead

whole seas of breath blooming on still water

traveling without compass or honing point

in the widest emptiest country in the world