Land Poor

Taylor Graham

She owns by mortgage five acres
of grit that once was rock, and rock
not yet ground down
to grit, and grass tough enough to push
through the cracks, dead
in summer, and winters of drought.
When it rains she jubilates
for green – not money to fix the fence
that rains tear out again,
but grass to feed her famine-sheep.
Then she wades waist-high in January flood
to clear the culverts lest they wash
the road away, what’s left of her
five acres an island
in a gradually subsiding sea.
Land she loves like her left arm.
She doubts the seasons will keep her,
but grind like weather
on mortgaged body against rock.
And now, without asking,
sun breaks cloud, glittering water-
diamonds everywhere,
creek-scour sand and leafless
branch. Even rock shines silver.

Seventy Years

Taylor Graham

What to do with the things we love
and at last must leave? She walks the dry
creekbed, remembering its spate
after a big storm. Raging down the torrent,
tree-limbs tore out her fences
at the crossings. But this winter morning,
sun is sweet on her skin. It turns
froth-scum on rocks to lemon-whip.
A log from higher on the slope
has come to rest like an axle
of the mountain; and on a neighbor’s
grassy hillside, five or more
boulders graze like sheep escaped
to greener quarters. So far from ocean,
she breathes-in damp and salt
and air, elements that constitute herself.
Isn’t she all the things she’s lived
with? How to throw it away – throw,
threw, thrown. To the flood?
Ride the current like a throne racing
downriver, home.