When your hands wore this soil

and lifted twenty feet

of granite for a well,

when your hands nursed the pump

that nursed the rich brown field

and scattered seed like rain,

hands circling with the hills,

you knew these clods,

these gray-limbed trees,

this sky, were more

than legal boundaries, sealed.

Now, with clean hands, I hold

a paper that holds forth

prerogatives of a line.

It circles your dark earth

in empty paper space

and cuts your living crown

of trees and rock-jeweled hills

more sharply than the wire

you stretched from post to post.

But the dry ink of your name

lies old upon this page,

unable to rush back

into your living hand.

I move now through your land

that greens with new, wild growth.

I search for you

where your feet splashed

those little hollows

in broad granite.

I strain to hear

you sing, but birds

blot out your song.

Not finding you, I prune

the trees, turn soil, plant seeds.

Now, sometimes, in the shade

of new green leaves, I sense

your earth-stained hands and feel

them merge, so slowly merge,

with mine.

Copyright © 1986 Marian Jane Dickinson