Friday poem

I'm posting an original poem every Friday for a year.

The distance

He was copper, as

soft-spoken as any man in our little town.

In his dark eyes I saw myself for what I was, no beauty but strong and tall.

I saw my children there,

brown

sienna

russet

wheatstraw Our life was hard.

I missed my sisters,

even my father's voice, hard and slate-gray. When my mother died we

watched from the hillside as the silvered casket settled down

the ropes inch by inch.

I set aside one hundred tears

and had them done before the sun fell behind the Blue Ridge

and dusk swallowed the valley

and we drove off again, always moving.