The sky gray as dishrags, she wore anyway
cutoffs and a pink bikini top, black mascara, inked snake forever
curling up her thigh. As if to gather up some secret sun,
she leaned into the fence. Then slipped
a menthol between her lips. More than once I’ve seen her
leg her way into a rust-bitten Ford—
one slope-jawed boy or another
draped over the wheel, a sneer for this girl
and all the world—and not even give a look
to her shambling, diabetic grandfather,
fumbling with the screen door, hacking a lung of tire-kicked dust.
That day the apples, too,
were falling. Worm-bitten, bird-pecked—
of a sudden she kicked a fist-sized fruit down the gravel,
and the sound wasn’t right, the puff of dust that rose
almost iridescent, a bit of spun light
spilled by such ordinary thoughtlessness
and rot. She saw it too. For she kicked another,
gave a laugh. All week I’ve been hearing her—creek water,
plucked strings, apple blossoms dropping on the breeze—
and fearing I too shamble through some stygian,
sugarless world. So, as now I do, I turn
to you, ten-week’s child—you,
whose fingers daily drink your mother’s face,
whose blue walls still bellow and sing—
and say to you some ordinary thing.
