This deep June evening with the sun pulling away from the sky
Sinking into the earth, its journey more than half gone, like mine –
This soft gold light finds a way through the blossoming dogwood,
Lights up the slats on the barn with gossamer gold, makes beautiful
The old;
This bluebird dead on the road, a bright blue period at the end
Of an unspoken sentence; above it five sparrows divebomb a crow –
The living going on with the business of living, defending, taking –
Without time for editing; only the dead can afford to punctuate;
This telephone pole that throws a shadow cross on the wooden slats,
This emptiness of the barns, wagon wheels inert against the silos,
The vines softening the doorframes, the barn stones put together
A hundred years ago by men and women who lived, once;
All these tell me that I will die, and soon;
And yet my heart sings the fierce green fields, the soft gold sun, the sweet Irises
Growing wild in the ditches, smelling for all the world like frosting
On a birthday cake; my heart swells like the waxing moon – and the five lines of the
Telephone wires draw the empty measures in perfect time, mile upon mile upon mile,
waiting for the notes
to come.
Halfway North 