Hot blue stars crowd one space, so many sailing
                    as a flock of doves. They remember the dead,
a tract of fifty acres, quartz and fennel in days
                    split in parts from when the sun goes down.
So many have come before, and each will go.

I come in part from my grandmother. She cooked corn
                    into moonshine with her father through red mud
and Holsteins and the patterns of chicken feet, crops
                    growing or maybe dying. She slept in her parents’ room
behind a sheet nailed to the ceiling. Peepers
                    and a bullfrog spoke. An owl asked questions nothing
seemed to answer. Coyotes ran a rabbit until it screamed,
                    and the landmark oak where armies had camped
a hundred years before bore impassive branches.

Her brothers fought until one swore he would kill
                    the other, and her mother canned and scattered
grain to the geese. At church, they sang of beautiful
                    saviors. She drank in the forest with her father, burning
alive into endless violet shining. She thought her stars were bound.

And so it’s been each generation, like the horns
                    that avow a same song of constant space.
She taped my infant mother’s nose and ears and toes
                    to try to bend them into something better,
and I was nursed on those stories, too, like smoke and milk.
                    Lightning chars the gleaned wheat fields. Coral snakes
weave between dry stems. I have fought fires
                    with shovel and hose from the well, from the deep parts
where water creeps through quartz and clay to fill a place
                    that we might have another chance to start again.