Homecoming
Now the immense loneliness begins.
— from “Onto a Vast Plain” Rainer Maria Rilke (The Book of Hour
The birch trees want to be left alone.
Lichen still fashions itself from algae and air;
heaven is only heaven.
Each evening comes sooner, bearing
the old beginnings.
Come let us find our way
beneath these brittle beams we thought
would guide us,
for I have brought us both enough
spent things, and chosen to keep
no record of what we were.
12-year-old girl grooming an old horse
for Karen
And though she is entered the wilderness
of adolescence where she must not love
old things, she rises early, keeping clean
her promise to feed him whatever
he still can eat: one or two stout pieces
of carrot, some herbs to ward off colic;
and to brush him as daybreak stands back up
in his shadow’s temperate peace, no choice
but to be the pretty rider who always will wear
the dungarees her mother isn’t allowed to wash,
the sweatshirt her brother used as a paint rag once,
the boots she still wants every year for Christmas.
