Love for the land in the time of property
Around this time of day she always thinks about Charlie.
Late afternoon sitting on her chair in the half-basement.
She found a way in through the broken door.
It’s a good place for her,
right in the center.
The center of what, exactly? The center of where?
Anyway it’s near all the big hospitals.
Only a couple of stairs to climb down
and nobody can tell she’s here when she pulls the door shut.
Charlie knows where to find her.
You have to be smart when you’re old.
Dust seeping in around the door.
It dries out her skin.
So dusty – the dust blows in from the street.
She doesn’t mind. Dust is land, her land, the land she’s got.
She can hold it in her hand.
She remembers the old place, the dust rolling off the empty fields in the spring
Dust floating through the air
Dust from the ground, all the hollows in the ground and how they worked them with hoes and rakes, pulling out stones, breaking up clumps, making it good ground for the seeds
And her favorite place to sit
Hidden by a rock / Held by the land / Open to the sky
And playing hide and go seek
Charlie and her played all afternoon.
And her mother came to the door of the house shouting “Dinner!” and she didn’t go, not till really late.
So many good places to hide.
She knew the land then, she’d go walk the land and hide in the hollows whenever she didn’t get along with the people
which was often.
Dust, dirt all over her and she didn’t care.
The land was a person, it had a shape, you could talk to it.
That was in the beginning
Then the land was sold.
She knows she should have talked, begged, shouted, argued, said something, anything.
There’s always something you can do.
But she didn’t say anything.
Silence stopping her mouth like dust.
Silence seeps in, through the cracks around the window and the door
Lies on the floor, coats your tongue, sour,
pulling you out,
pulling the moisture out of you.
Thirsty.
It reminds her of something:
It reminds her of the chain link fence she held her hand against.
Touching the fence as if she could touch something, somebody, through it.
Touch the land that used to be her land,
that is her land.
Her fields, her woods, her horizon, her sky
part of the land, the country, the city hiding in the country, the world
Part of a crew stuffed into the back of a truck
going to work at dawn
shoulder to shoulder
heat filling the air
sweat filling their pores
water from their skin sticking them together
Part of the crew when they unload from the back of the truck at the edge of the land.
And Charlie
Charlie said
you stick with me. I’ll stick with you. Nobody can separate us.
The work. The tools. The ground. The sweat. The dust. Everything.
Working the land, other people’s land, but part of the same land,
walking the roads from place to place, field to field,
blown all over like dust.
She saw him leave
one morning, like usual, they were all getting ready to go in different directions
She didn’t think anything of it. She knew he’d be back.
Charlie can find her here.
If he wants to.
If he wants to.
When you’re old you have to be smarter.
You have to find a place.
Somehow, anyhow.
Stuck in a corner of the ground. Somewhere
A place where you can stay
and other people can find you.
