Even here, the fields try to erase themselves—
stiff with sunlight, rough with frost—
as your sister walks you through a country
whose backwards name you’ve almost lost
despite yourself. It’s taken forever to return
to tickseed and switchgrass, long blades
that refuse winter like the trick
you were taught as children: warming each minute
by rambling, back and forth, until you forgot
January’s razor on skin, the crisp sky
an afterthought strung up above the trees.
You lived here once,
back when you were obedient and young,
gap-toothed like your father and his father too,
and in this dream, you’ve come back to forgive
each acre for hiding inside your head—
for being so bright and starless and impossible
to reach. You’ve come back to bury yourself
among daylilies and broken spades,
lost galaxy of your sister’s breath,
two voices—braided together, bound to wind—
like a song for this valley or the floodplain below.
Like this light you thought had been dead for years.