Tethers

Tethers

Small patches of color sprinkle
over her when he's away tending
the gray fields. Browsing an old photo album,
these small hours of quiet she's left with,
she soaks in the spectrums
so many years
ago; crowded markets in Delhi, or floating
in the icy captured roll of the Rockies.

He was strength in skin when they met,
And her feet were so very sore
from walking, the dust
that covered her crusted continents and his
just the healthy grit of black farming soil.
His rough hands helped reshape her,
brought her home to birth,
the long drawing hours he sweated away
from her. For seasons her reasons
stayed with her, before she saw the faded
shade of years wrinkling her, sinking by inches
into the dirt, the old farm house a circling buzzard.
The soil beneath her nails became tar, and she
heavy with it.

Fingers trailing the sail on an old postcard,
she smells the seaside in Vancouver, salty
tearing, and churning water of a rocky shoreline.
She has an hour or so a day
between his lunch and the school bus -
spends it like foreign coins
scrying through the graying mists
to a time she could discern
her shades.