Joyce Sutphen
The partly open hay barn door, white frame around the darkness,
the broken board, small enough for a child
to slip through.
Walking in the cornfields in late July, green tassels overhead,
the slap of flat leaves as we pass, silent
and invisible from any road.
Hollyhocks leaning against the stucco house, peonies heavy
as fruit, dropping their deep heads
on a dog house roof.
Lilac bushes between the lawn and the woods,
a tractor shifting from one gear into
the next, the throttle opened,
the smell of cut hay, rain coming across the river,
the drone of the hammer mill,
milk machines at dawn.
It has been quite the year, I guess, and endings have been a theme. I wasn't ready for that, as if anyone ever could be, but they just seemed out of place, too soon, too wrong for where life is right now. Clearly different than The Last Policeman but this narrator too seems to know that an ending is near. The words, details, sounds and smells of these moments send me right there as she recalls them. I'm not sure, actually, if she is recalling -- creating a survey of these particular memories -- or if she's there, observing the peonies and listening to the sounds of this summer day. Was it she who slipped through the broken board of the barn? Or is that a reflection on the idea of youth, now long gone? She seems to have a familiarity with this place, as though she has seen these details many times, as though each image is comforting and warm and quiet and known. Like all that she has always seen is exactly what she wants to take with her wherever she may go.
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