Summer nights, I still smell the honeysuckle at the edge of her voice when she called me to listen to the bob-whites across the field, their call and response a way to measure the interval between dusk and white blaze as the moon, our distaff and shadow-bearing source of profusion, rose. Wild roses she called God’s grace. Ohh, she says now, drawing out the vowel, making do. Her words, like petals, have slipped by hank or handful loose, and fallen in a clump at the foot of the last nodding peony. How I loved to hear her say Chula, Coverly, place names I might now graft to the new brood of roses, or chant, giving weight to the nameless name of God. Tonight the night is solstice bright, the moon close to brimming. How long does long ago last? Bred in the bone, this ache to hold her. This hunger to know the child she has irrevocably become, drawn so far inside herself I can’t quite touch the hem of her cotton night-dress as she rises out of her body and rambles beyond the spreading fields of wheat and stars, back through the orchard of pear trees, across the wild meadows, slowly, oh so slowly, going home.
Yonder
Margaret Gibson Click to read more...
Margaret Gibson received a Lamont Prize, several Pushcarts and the 1996 Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah in 1996. She has also received a fellowship from the NEA and has published many collections with LSU, most recently Broken Cup. "Yonder" first appeared in Shenandoah 62/1.