Call to Dinner
The woman’s body moves
through the kitchen,
calls others wordlessly to dinner,
like the boy daydreaming by the brown pond,
with dusk coming on,
examining a tiny leaf
as if he’s grasping the whole tree,
and the little girl running
through the field
before darkness snatches the ground out
from under her
and the older boy
rubbing the fine long head
of his mule,
his face full of farm smudges
and the farmer himself,
dragging his body home
like an old wagon,
while the boy makes
a sudden grab for a frog
with his net
and the girl bursts through the gate
as the older boy considers
all that will be his some day
though at night, he knows.
it belongs to the moon and stars
and she stares out the window
at her flock coming together
in the last cringe of daylight,
praying one doesn’t bring a frog home
and a second doesn’t fall
and bruise her knee
and a third is sure that the life
laid out for him
is really the one he wants
and a fourth
who knows nothing but the land,
who may as well have been
found one day in its rich, vital soil
like Moses in the bulrushes
than born in some hospital,
who’s seldom seen
without some implement in his hand
or in the saddle of a tractor,
for this is her canvas
and she has nothing else to compare it to,
and yet, in the sinking sun,
it still rivets her attention,
in her weathered heart,
it bears up all needs,
and her mind, that soundless bell
tolls this family back to her,
in these relentless darker shades of day.