Marcella’s Homestead II

Following the property line, we came
upon a hollar, a smooth vulva
of earth that gave over to a plot
of tobacco, a house, a small pasture.
Your mother and aunt walked quickly
down, clipping themselves to their pasts,
and there at the house they spoke to
a woman and her father, who had
heard of the Jones place, that up there
was a truckful of pretty girls. You
and I held back a little, standing
apart, until the woman’s daughters, maybe
ages six and eleven, drew us in.
The older one with only a sun dress
and sandy hair came to you, said,
"You’re beautiful." You thanked
her, and then we asked to see
her horse and dog, and the girls
told us about their daddy, how he’d be
home soon from the tool and die
shop. Before we left, their mother
looked at your hair, and then
pointed to her younger daughter,
her hair red and full and human,
and said, "Hair like that will get her
into boy trouble." Returning to
the homestead, I wanted to amend what
the mother had said, or what her daughter
might have meant, or what I had hidden
within my own silence, admitting I am
hewn by your beauty amid these falling
poplars and oaks. But here were
children only, waiting for their father
to come home, a wife also waiting
for her husband, everyone waiting
for a slow turn of love to arrive
autumnal and settle on this land--
I knew what to call it,
this light and dirt that fall
on every child of us, and it is
the same name that anyone else
might mouth at that moment, at least
most of the time: beauty, beauty.

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