My mother’s a stranger to me
in the country,
and I am a stranger
in my mother’s country.
A city kid in penny loafers,
I stumble through meadow grass,
dodge the buzz of dragonfly
off cattail.
All year long
she doesn’t say much,
but on a Missouri highway,
past framed fields
and sagging fruit stands,
she points and calls them out,
“Soybeans! Alfalfa!
Kaffircorn! Spring clover!”
She catalogues
Uncle Harry’s place
with a twisted stick:
storm cellar, feedbin,
boysenberry patch, poison oak,
hedgeapple grove.
In the land of fodder
and new milk
she still climbs fences.
Marie, she’s called down here,
slicing ham in a farmhouse kitchen
full of aunts and uncles
so pruned in the face
you can’t tell man from woman;
Marie, who lives in town now,
knows when to plant,
when to pick,
how to stomp rabbits from brushpiles,
why store eggs have gone pale.
After dishes
she walks alone
in a barnyard of banty hens
and tractor ruts
past a shattered hog chute
she once named Corn Cob Trail,
pokes a turkey feather into a cob,
tosses it high,
watches it spin, spin down.
Heading back,
we stop by Uncle Ray’s.
I see her there in her country,
the girl, again the girl,
hair black as shade,
leaning over
a natural spring well:
When the ladle dips,
tiny fish scatter
in the pupils of her eyes.