Some twenty miles out this road gives way to grass.
\nI stopped there once, no track for miles
\nbut mine,<\/p>\n
and that one already
\nspringing back, the grass erasing
\nmy passage. I wasn\u2019t much more than a boy\u2014<\/p>\n
the blown dust a fist against my face, my father
\ndead the February before,
\nand ever since<\/p>\n
my mother silent and moon-faced at the kitchen table,
\nher hand around a cup
\nof coffee, cold.<\/p>\n
For chokecherries
\nI had an old ice-cream bucket,
\ndeer-hide gloves for the lambs\u2019 blood stain of them<\/p>\n
on my fingers. I knew I was on my own, didn\u2019t believe
\nin anything but my few years
\nof dry seasons\u2014<\/p>\n
though what a winter it had been. Snow
\nhigh as me, and higher. Even these bone-scape plains
\nerased, gone,<\/p>\n
and gone too
\nthe shelterbelt, corrals, broken-
\nbacked sheep-shed my father let lean and in his sickness<\/p>\n
fall. That day,
\nI didn\u2019t know that so long as the river swells
\nwith what the mountains give, chokecherries bloom<\/p>\n
and bloom and never
\nberry. I wandered the bank. I\u2019d never seen
\nthe river so full, would never see it so full again.<\/p>\n
And not a chokecherry to be found\u2014
\nthe trees a mess of wasp-happy
\nblossoms.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some twenty miles out this road gives way to grass. I stopped there once, no track for miles but mine, and that one already springing back, the grass erasing my passage. I wasn\u2019t much more than a boy\u2014 the blown dust a fist against my face, my father dead the February before, and ever since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-2al","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8329"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10169,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329\/revisions\/10169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}