My Daughter On Wolf Hill Farm

My Daughter On Wolf Hill Farm   

The same year the hook and eye latch fails on a window

Grandfather fails on a treadmill. Wolf Hill farm is pounded into rocks--Family history

     

The fields run with wild roses as we gather dinner greens.

Then the roses bleed in the small rooms of another life.

Buckets sweat for rain in this bright month

when sleep crawls before an eyelash

and a moth dances over a folding bed.

 

Once her nose bud bled

into a basin where we wash underwear and banded socks.

Hot steam and the perfumed soaps

raise a soft rouge over her eyes.

Sunset conspires with the insects.

At night a stinging strawberry wildfire

burns down her shoulders.

Then for a tender week she lives suspended in blankets.

 

Time bleeds away, each day sheds like skin.

The edges curl and brown

until she folds her arms in a watchful photograph.

School paste runs out of glass,

she chews the teapot spout…

I save the teeth marks.

There is colored water in a margarine tub,

the tiny orange sweets she would soon tire of.

 

I survived as a brave thought,

as a wigged president on a silk dollar.

At ten I am an autograph,

a letter from a Belgian city,

a color snapshot in a corner posed by a tallish weed.

 

One August we paint weeping stars

and the roses grow tall, wild

thick as mosquitoes;

they swell our nights.

Soon terrible rains drown the wind,

yet the trees cry out for water.

 

On my last visit to the house

the hook and eye latch fails on the window.

briars smother the fields.

Old borders of the world are done,

limestone spikes mark the strange,

overwhelmed trees bow to our weakness.

 

Life has no smooth finish alone in a town built yesterday.

in last century's pictures I find no evidence

I was a father.  Winter begins on my eyebrows,

wings cresting high on my forehead,

a fleshy smile soothes my temper,

now the days run wild through my face