Robert Lietz - Poem

Cattail and goldenrod browns, green wheat,
a weathered red truck at the heart of the south field,
oxford and banker's greys in severer lines and tufts.
In a glance to the south field, a convening
and dispersing of mixed wings at the elder.  The stories
begin another time, faces the earth puts on,
sentiments to ease truths the World means to tell us,
where groves appear to be horizon knolls,
and the deer come through those risings fall, assembling
families at one table.  Stories begin another time,
litanies of second cousins, aunts, and whereabouts,
why the stepsons, daughters went the ways they had to,
until the talk turns serious at guilt's rim,
and the table stills, and the men get up to wash off
more than dinner greases.  The women say
their after-meal thanks apart, having watched side-looks,
having themselves heard dreams of work
and reconsidered risks, of Idaho, Montana, of summer snows
where wind picks fallen cattle clean.  Dinner
with friends done, easy wind peeling grey.  More stars
than weeks of early sleep revealed.
The upper rooms in a double line of country houses
turn parlors in the dark, suitable for couples.
Then Saturdays, sweating into work-clothes, Sundays
sweating out missed notes, gagging the sermons
that don't quit targeting men's hearts.  Tonight though,
that meal over with, she opens her house to stars,
listens to the kittens drawn by moon out of the bean stubble
and goldenrod, speaking the mildest "begone"
the kittens ever scattered at.  Tonight even the cracking
of the fenceposts does not bother, that someone
desired steps across, does not turn her thoughts to shooting
or to bootfall among cattails, the field rats gone off,
and the truck the men abandoned, leaving a woman
behind to count, leaving her to the clapboards' score
and ticking flourish of their day's heat.