The Land Creates Poem by David Kowalczyk

My mother has lived on this farm
all her life.
She wanders the house,
moaning to the walls.
Her hands jerk about,
branches in a blizzard.
She asks about a woman
I haven't spoken to in years.


'Will Wendy visit in the spring? '
Five times the question echoes.
Five times I answer, 'No. No. No! '


I pull on heavy boots
and clamber off into
the chill, soggy field
choked with rotting leaves,
fraught with withered goldenrod.


Along the weed-swamped banks,
Cadillac Creek's muddy murmur
is shattered by a wild yowl.
A massive gray cat leaps from
an oak tree and bounds off into
a thicket of blackberry brambles.


These corn fields and maple woods
are cursed.
Is it fear, trapped deep
beneath this clay-veined earth,
set free in spring by the plow's cold blade,
or memory?