You wore your hair on an unwritten novel
That was bound with your daily drawl
Mixed among the thunderstorms
Of a lonely prairie home.
Cows were milked twice a day
And dust blew into your eyes
Leaving streaks running diagonal
Across your rosy cheeks
With an agonizing look
You had long put on
Prepared for deepening silence.
A memory was your novel
That got caught up finding new verbs
For the same things you’d always done
And your hands that worked
In daily grind
With suds and lemonade
Looked increasingly like
They were forming to the job.
Why did you watch the horizon
Each day around two or three?
As dust had settled from morning’s fury
“In time for tea,” you’d say,
The milk cow, knowing nothing more
Chewed and watched you at your chore
No thought did cross it’s mind.
So sad did the lesson grow
A mind lost of ten thousand reasons
Thunderstorm in Sun’s sweet blessing
If it was not you, save pray for more
So today will sing of tomorrow
A song you knew intuitively
As cow’s milk begun to pour
And dust blew through your hair.
