Walker Cove: Two Sonnets

"A debt no one demanded"

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I

Spring was a fog burned off by early light,
And summer six months of the heat that clings
to stable floors. All our side roads took flight
and died in question marks of gravel. Springs
still bubble up there, though. And ponies shake
dawn’s dust out of their manes under the oaks.
There I learned what’s best, and what’s my own,
and how they’re different, touching the white stake
protruding from a dead bull’s skull. How deaths
of animals and dreams serve purposes.
I write to answer the cold stare of cousins
who have no time for careful words, or guests.
Who raise sore backs and watch as I pass by,
they at their given work, and I at mine.

II

A debt no one demanded: time and pain.
I have no post to man there, to keep watch
on moulding trailers or the sheen of frost
on winter grass. They say cougars killed men
in that valley, and bears, but tobacco
killed most of all, the dust of it frosting
the split knuckles of boys who summered working
warehouses where it hung like mistletoe.
Who will drape a wreath on these strange graves?
And what could ease their rest? The seasons round
the edges of their memory better than words.
Yet I return in homage to that hallowed ground.
A debt no one demanded: time and pain.
Words shift and propagate like wind-blown grain.

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