Mary Herrin Looks on Her Husband,
Discharged, Returned from Manassas
William in the frame of the open window.
In the distance the trees and noonday sky,
and beyond, the war with the Yankees.
William guides the plow through the mule's
droppings, limping, with his one good eye.
The window's mockernut hickory rustling
yellow whispers, stroked by an October wind.
She remembers being alone on the farm,
the emptiness half-filled now like the cavern
of his shot out eye. She smells the simmer
of water-ground hominy but waits to call him
to noon dinner, waits to sit with his silence.
Maybe her heart is too easily reached, she thinks,
but maybe when the dead spread over the land
countless like stars, Jesus will come,
deliver all
from this suffering, this living with darkness,
William restored to his shapely body.
Steven
Croft
Steven Croft lives on a
barrier island off the coast of Georgia. His latest chapbook is At
Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, December 2023). His
poems have appeared in Misfit Magazine, Live Nude Poems, Ariel
Chart, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other places and have been nominated
for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.