Our Corner Acre, April Afternoon
Side by side, we dig in the withered flowerbed,
the sudden warmth, and once again you say, See
how much the light has shifted. I nod my head
at another changing season, our aching knees.
We pull out brittle roots, new stones that surface
every year, tokens of the old sheep field we raked
and raked, seeded, treed. Sad, and yet not, the pace
of branches needing trimming, the worms we shake
from our trowels, their hungry bodies startled, blind.
Something startles us as well. We set down tools
and gloves, gather lilacs, open all the windows wide.
The croon of wood frogs, bird-cry fills our room,
our vining. A breeze across sheets and skin
carries us back outside or floats the outside in.
CHRISTINE RHEIN is the author of Wild Flight, winner of the Walt McDonald Book Prize in Poetry (Texas Tech University Press). Read more.
“Our Corner Acre, April Afternoon” originally appeared in The MacGuffin.