Remember
those dark nights you huddled near me
on the drafty
linoleum landing under a yellow light bulb?
You
whispered stories, while I turned page after page
to learn if Pa had
found his way home through the blizzard.
We
battled grasshoppers, prairie fires and scarlet fever
while Dad laughed
along with Johnny Carson downstairs.
I
gathered in your words like sun-dried sheets on the line,
followed your trail
of black-eyed susans outside my door.
Years
later, I walked DeSmet streets and Dakota prairie
where girls in
bonnets and red calico pretended to be you.
I found
myself on a rise above your cold desolate dugout,
leaning into the
same wind that clawed your brown braids.
I
followed a trickling gully past an uprooted cottonwood,
knowing you’d
been here, buttoning up your innocence.
[This poem was first published in Connecticut River Review]
Julia Meylor
Simpson
lives in